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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. | 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



n 



H- 



X 




THE 




UNION RESTORED 



BY LEGAL AUTHORITY. 



ITS PAST ERRORS, ITS PRESENT RESTORATION, AND 
ITS BRIGHT FUTURE. 



By J. DICKINSON HUNT, M. D. 



CONTAINING ILLUSTRATIONS OF 



PDBLIC AND PRIVATE RIGHTS, AND PDBLIC AND PRIVATE WRONGS. 



^ 




NEW YORK: 

PRINTED AT No. 20 NORTH WILLIAM STREET. 
1865. 




THE 



UNION RESTORED 



BY LEGAL AUTHORITY. 



ITS PAST ERRORS, ITS PRESENT RESTORATION, AND 
ITS BRIGHT FUTURE. 



♦ V. . '-^ 






By J. DICKINSON ^HUNT, M. D. 



CONTAINING ILLUSTRATIONS OF 



rUBLlC AND PRIVATE mm, AND PDBLIC AND PRIVATE WRONGS. 



NEW YORK: 

PRINTED ^T No. 20 NORTH WILLIAM STREET. 

1865. 






Entc-rcd, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S65, ___- 

By J. DICKINSON HUNT, ^^^^H^C'^^^ 

In the Clerk's Offioo of tbo District Court (tf tlic United States for the 'mmtiaam 
District of New York. 



( 

«4 



JLf 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Preface 5 

Remarks — Mind is the Motive Power of Government . . > 8 



CHAPTER I. 

Man to rule over all — America to give the first example of Popular Government 9 

Mental and moral preparation for the acceptance of Popular Institutions 14 

Washington established a wise Republic 15 

Jeff. Davis plunges his native countrj- in civil war 16 

Abraham Lincoln struck from the roll of living men 17 

Washington and Lincoln associated in the grandeur of their obsequies 17 

War, conducted by Washington, unlike the war conducted bj Lincoln 17 

Union raised more firmly on its Centre 13 

Abraham Lincoln destroys the political heresy of State Rights 13 

Constitution established a Government 19 

Constitution the supreme Law of the land 19 

Supremacy of the laws maintained 20 

Repudiation of the National debt 20 

Oh, why should the Spirit of mortal be proud ? 22 

Writers on Statutory and Constitutional construction 23 

Common Law the Title Deed 23 

Consent of all Nations accounted the Law of Nature 24 

Government not for the special benefit of the Governors 25 

Spirit of Tyranny cannot exhibit itself in this country 25 



CHAPTER IL 

Reconstruction of the Union 27 

Time arrived when the American People should know what crime is 27 

Slavery cast into oblivion 29 

Lincoln removed Precedent and re-established Principle 31 

Language of Kossuth 31 

Equal and exact justice to all applied by Lincoln 31 

Violation of Truth involved Nations in destruction 32 

One weak point in the fortress of our freedom 32 

Duty of Government to protect its weakest Citizens S3 

Monopolies Illustrated 34 

First Principles of our Fathers 35 



4 CONTEITTS. 

Truth, like a Torch, does two things 35 

Arrogated Power virtually cast into the shades of oblivion 36 

Test between Error and Truth 3g 

Security and Justice founded on the Principle of Truth 37 

Legislature to secure Individual rights 37 

Practice of Law 3g 

False Pretence, remedy for 33 

Tax on Title of Mortgaged Property to its full value violation of equal and exact 

justice on 

Eevealed Law of greater validity than the moral Law 39 

Dual Divisions of the Human race 4q 

Education gives Government to genius 40 

Fallacy of Precedent Illustrated 4j 

Check and Balance system of Representation necessary 42 

Reconstruction of Legislative System 44 

America makes rather than follows precedent 4g 



Dr. Channing on Self-culture. 



46 



Difl'erence between Practice of Law and Medicine 47 

Word Law defined ,_ 

47 

Creation a Unity on which all Laws depend 40 

Motive Power greater than that of a Despotism 43 

Unity traced in every thing in Nature 40 

Blackstone's Comments on the Law of Matter and Motion 49 

Duty of American Legislators cq 

Principle applied by the Profession gi 

Principle, true meaning of, gi 

Language of Daniel S. Dickinson, in 1861 g2 



PREFACE. 



The reasoning and illustrations contained in the following pages 
are intended to direct the intelligent American citizen in some of 
those trains of thought which he ought to prosecute while looking 
forward to the enjoyment of that Deed of Trust — that invaluable 
Triune Estate — Life^ Liberty and Proioerty, received and conveyed 
in Trust to us for our use by that long list of Patriots and Sages, 
who at the hazard of all that was dear to man, signed the Declara- 
tion of Independence, as also those who framed the great charter of 
our liberties. Long live their memory, and cherished be their names 
in every American bosom; and while true merit is esteemed and 
appreciated or virtue honored, mankind will never cease to revere 
and ever to remember, with hearts full of unfeigned gratitude, those 
venerable Fathers for these inestimable immunities which were 
bought with a price, not of silver or of gold, nor of precious stones, 
but "with the sacrifice of many pure and precious lives, and with the 
sanguinary flow of life's vital fluid, which was freely spilled upon 
the plains of this now happy country. 

The Author was induced to engage Jn the discussion of the subject 
of regeneration and reconstruction of the Union, from a considera- 
tion that many vague and erroneous conceptions are entertained 
among the free-born American people in regard to the nature of the 
unity of the Federal Government and its i^etinue of States. In eluci- 
dating the train of thought here produced, he has brought forward 
Avithout hesitation the discoveries of modern science and applied its 
principles to this Republic, established upon Democratic principles, 
in harmony with the scale by which all things ascend to unity. The 
writer iLses the word principles according to the common accepta- 
tion of the term ; but to speak more philosophically it is that one 
great principle which binds all things together. 

He has carefully avoided every thing that might appear like vague 
or extravagant conjecture ; and he trusts that the opinions he has 
broached and the conclusions he has deduced, will generally be 
found to accord with the analogies of Nature and the dictates of 
Revelation. lie is aware that he has many prejudices to encounter, 
arising from the vague and indiflerent manner in which the subject 
of Life, Liberty, and Property have been hitherto treated, and the 



6 PREFACE. 

want of those expansive views of the one great principle which 
binds tliem tog-ether, and which every American citizen should en- 
deavor to obtain ; but he feels confident that those who are best 
qualified to appreciate his sentiments, aviU treat with candor an 
attempt to elucidate a subject that may serve as a mirror for all the 
sons of Columbia to behold themselves, and try the Representatives 
of this gigantic young Republic by testing the capacity of mind for 
the concentration of this thundering plurality — this motive power of 
Democratic rule. 

The duality of motion renders it necessary that the author pub- 
lish this work in the dual divisions of the individual man and Gov- 
ernment, in order that it may correspond Avitli this dual Democratic 
RepubHc, and with the dual divisions of public and private rights — 
public and private wrongs. With proper inculcations of the precepts 
and practice of our fathers, and particularly to place in a proper 
light before the uninitiated, the reflection of a Republic established 
upon Democratic principles, with the indeUble mark of truth and 
nature stamped upon it. 

There is a centre in every circle, and a central idea in every sys- 
tem in Heaven and on Earth. The Declaration of Independence, 
Confederation and Constitution, forms the centre of the Federal 
Government, around which the States revolve — a centre of the 
municipal government of States around which counties revolve, 
and a centre of the sub-municipalities or counties which, like the 
Federal Government, have a retinue of towns for their attend- 
ants, being irradiated by their beams and revolving around their 
attractive influence. Upon this unity, this centre, the author has 
erected his superstructure, which he is vain enough to imagine 
may, with perhaps some variations, withstand the storms and 
tempests of time. Seizing upon the unity of all things with a 
true analytical grasp, comhinUig, co^nparing and discrimina/inr/^ hy 
applying them to the practical end in vieio, he has been enabled to fill 
up the cliasms with something of his own, thereby correcting as he 
humbly hopes some errors. Instead of traversing the system of 
American Law in a circle, he has traversed it in a line agreeable to 
the principles of engineering and the views of Lord Ijacon, who once 
remarked, that "The reason medical knowledge had not advanced, 
Avas because physicians reasoned too much in a circle and not 
enough in a line." The author attributes the present contradictory 
and conflicting opinions on legal science to the same cause, and has 
made the guage points of a line on tlie engineer's rule his guiding star, 
bringing forth arguments which he is not aware have been taken 
notice of by authors, when treating on the subject of legal science. 
He has endeavored to illustrate these in minute detail, and in a 
popular manner, so as to be within the comprehension of every 
reader, and perhaps more convincing than tlie subtle and refined dis- 
quisitions of metaphysicians. He trusts, that the force of the whole 
combined, will be found to amount to as high a degree of moral de- 
monstration as can be expected in relation to a subject which Black- 



PREFACE. 7 

stone informs us can only be conceived by human reason. His 
method of arriving at facts may appear crude and undigested to 
many minds, but his object has been to get at facts in that Avay and 
manner by ■\vhicli he could make himself best understood, whether 
by €07)12^0 rison, anecdote or fable. And, therefore, he is in hopes that 
the matter and not the manner, will be the guiding star to the reader. 
Facts, when disjointed, are the mere bricks or material with Avhich 
the builder of all systems must work. And to deny to any man the 
merit of being the architect of a great edifice of truth on that 
account, would be just as reasonable as to ascribe the merit of St. 
Paul's Cathedral to the donkeys and other beasts of burden Sir 
Christopher Wren necessarily employed in carrying the marble and 
mortar composing it. 

The practical reflections and remarks embodied in this work will 
not. the author is persuaded, be considered by any of his readers as 
either unnecessary or inappropriate to the subject of regeneration 
and reconstruction, under the newly developed power of the Consti- 
tution over the people to prevent individual rights from interfering 
with the safety of the States. In doing this, it has not been the de- 
sign of the writer to contribute to the political elevation of any man ; 
he has aimed rather to display the spirit and principles of the Ameri- 
can nation, and to exhibit by the death of an individual, the nature 
of the relation which that nation sustains to its public men.- He lias 
endeavored, in this way, to throw some light upon the character of 
our institutions, and to illustrate in some degree, the spirit of the 
nation and the age. 

The philosophy of history is more valuable than f;\cts. Remark- 
able as are the incidents both in the life and death of Abraham Lin- 
coln, they would not have attracted the particular attention of the 
writer, if he liad not believed, that in laying them before the public, 
an opportunity would be furnished of discussing political principles 
which are of vital importance to the prosperity of our country. 
They rouse the sluggish to exertion, give increased energy to the 
most active intellect, excite a salutary vigilance over our public 
functionaries, and prevent tluit apathy which has proved the ruin of 
Republics. Like the electric spark, they dispel from the political 
atmosphere the latent causes of disease and death. With these few 
remarks, he consigns his work, with the hope that it may not be 
altogether unworthy of attention. That it may tend to impress all 
freemen to duly consider the price of the privileges they enjoy, and 
not resign them into the hands of others, to consider liberty the 
greatest political blessing that God can bestow on his creature man, 
to expand the believer's conception of the attributes of the Divinity, 
and the glory of that inheritance which is reserved in heaven for the 
laithfal, and to excite, in the mind of every reader, an urgent desire 
to cultivate those dispositions and virtues which will prepare him 
fur the enjoyment of celestial bliss, is the author's nu^st sincere wish, 
as it was the great object he had in view when engaged in its com- 
position and compilation. 



EEMARKS. 



MIND IS THE MOTIVE POWER OF GOVEKNMENTS. 

By the motion of man's hands the pyramids were produced. The 
same motion, acting reversely might make them vanish from the 
plains where they have stood the wonders of centuries. If the 
identical j^owers, which may render a temple a heap of ruins, be 
applied in the opposite way for its preservation and defence, why 
may not the motive power of a physical agent, which, wrongly ad- 
ministered, has destroyed the life of a nation, be employed, in a right 
direction, to preserve its existence. 

" Philosophy, wisdom, and liberty, support each other : he who 
will not reason is a bigot, he who cannot is a fool, and he who dares 
not is a slave !" — (Sir WiUiam Drummond.) The motive power of a 
Republic must be greater and more rapid than that of a despotism, 
inasmuch as all such movements can only result from the action of 
mind on matter. What great things, therefore, does the Lord God 
require of those who are in great places representing this gigantic 
Repubhc in which is concentrated the thimdering plurality — the mo- 
tive power of Democratic rule, mind, is an emanation from the Deity, 
it goes forth in its spiritual dignity, connected with, yet distinct from, 
the grosser elements of life. In the contemplation of this great 
attribute, we stand on the farthest banks of reason's Rubicon. We 
are aware of its existence by its manifestations, but its origin rests 
in the Arcana of the works and wonders of God. 

Of the essence of this element I frankly acknowledge my ignor- 
ance, and desire to avoid entering on a fruitless analysis of that 
mysterious principle which shed its intelligent light on the dwellers 
in Eden, has accompanied succeeding generations of humanity, and 
will outlive in a purer condition in another and better state of being 
the last tottering vital fi-ame that lingers on the verge of a material 
world. It is, however, in some way connected with matter, and the 
medium of that connection is electi-icity. 

Electricity must, therefore, be considered the great vivifying prin- 
ciple of nature by which she carries on most of her operations. It 
is the most subtle and active of all fluids. " It is a kind of soul 
which pervades and quickens every part of nature." It is, physio- 
logically considered, the connection between mind and matter ; the 
power, but not the essence of vitality. It is, politically considered, 
the connector between the mind of the people and the matter of 
government ; the power, but not the essence of political life. It is 
not the laws of the State, nor the laws of the United States, nor 



TEE UmON RESTORED. 9 

the people or matter composing the States ; but it is the arrange- 
ment of that matter, and the eternal principle of law concentrated 
in the mind of the people, and applied to that arrangement, that 
sets the political machinery of the government in harmonious mo- 
tion. This eternal principle or power is ditferent throughout the 
vast creation, moving and acting in all bodies, and giving them cer- 
tain properties peculiar to their own organization and the situation 
in which they are found. This principle, then, my friends, is 
nothing less than the great I AM, the builder of the universe and 
the upholder of all its parts, acting according to certain laws which 
he himself has fixed, and which are immutable. 



CHAPTEE I. 



Man last cheated to rule over all — America the latest found of the conti- 
nents OF OUR EARTH, TO GIVE THE FIRST EXAMPLE OF THAT TRULY POPULAR SYSTEM 
OP GOVERNMENT, THAT SYSTEM SOON TO CONTROL ALL NATIONS — THE TRUTH OF THE 
DUALITY Ot MOTION IS MIGHTY AND MUST PREVAIL. 

Man, in the plenitude of his mental powers, the master spirit of 
a material Avorld, is a subject which must, at all times, engage the 
attention of the moralist, as he looks, from the smallest atom scat- 
tered in his path, to the boundless intelligence of a great first cause. 

The gradual additions to the systems of animal existence, from 
the zoophyte, scarcely to be distinguished from a vegetable, de- 
prived of the organs of locomotion, chained to the rock which is at 
once its cradle and its grave, to man, with his majestic intellect and 
perfect cerebral organization, is a subject which cannot be contem- 
plated without giving rise to admiration at the progressive ad- 
vancement in the chain of animated nature, and gratitude for the 
superiority of those gifts which stand as the crown of eternity on 
the capital of the living column, decorating the brow of the master 
spirit who directs and controls the whole. 

Therefore, let me beg of you to look upon me only as a living 
column, on the capital of Avhich stands the lamp of reason, reflect- 
ing the light of revelation on all surrounding intelligencies that 
come within the puixfier of its brilliant rays, and serve as a beacon 
to draw you into the channel of contemplation and moor you 
safely into the exercise of those noblest gifts of heaven — the reason- 
ing faculties given you by the great Architect of the Universe. 

On the higher powers of Observation, Comparison, Compre- 



10 THE rmiON RESTORED 

hension and Direction, termed Mind or Intellect, man stands pre- 
eminent above all animals ; in so fiir as regards the more immediate 
observation of certain things around him, he is nevertheless excelled 
in some respects by many. The eagle has a finer and farther sight ; 
the hearing of the mole is more acute ; the dog and the vulture 
distinguish odors wholly inappreciable by him ; not a ieyf of the 
wilder denizens of the forest have even a keener sense of taste and 
touch. In mere preceptive power, then, the beasts of the field are, 
in some things, permitted to surpass us ; while the sagacity of the 
elephant and the dog, the courage and emulation of the horse, the 
foresight of the ant, the cunning of the fox, and the social and 
building habits of the beaver, declare to us — however unpleasing 
the announcement — that others of God's creatures besides ourselves 
possess the elements, at least, of that reason upon which we so 
highly pride ourselves. To the greater degree of complexity — ■ 
perhaps I should rather say completeness of his cerebral organiza- 
tion — to his more perfect development of that source of all reason- 
ing power, the brain, man assuredly owes this corresponding in- 
crease in the number and force of his reasoning faculties. The 
more complete mechanism of his prehensible organ the hand, gives 
him the power to execute what his head conceives, in a degree of 
perfectibility that we look for in vain in the works of any other 
tribe of the animal kingdom. Look at " man's full, fair front ;" it 
is a superadded, not a superfluous part ; the more it diminishes and 
recedes, the nearer you will find its possessor to be akin to the 
brute. 

But, my friends, the rudiments of every portion of this instru- 
ment of man's reasoning faculties, this directing brain, variously 
developed, may be detected in almost every link of the great chain 
of animated beings of which he is confessedly the chief To every 
variety of race that animates tlfe globe, whether in external or in- 
ternal configuration, we have undeniably many features of relation- 
ship ; nor let us spurn even the meanest and most shapeless as 
beneath our notice ; for of every organic production of their com- 
mon maker, man, while }'et in the womb of his parent, has been the 
type ! his foetal form successively partaking of the nature of the 
worm, fish and reptile, and rapidly traversing still higher gradations 
in the scale of organized existence, to burst at last upon the view 
in all the fullness and fairness of the perfect infant. But it is not 
in his outward form only that he passes through these various gra- 
dation's of animal life. From Comparative Anatomy we also learn 
that each of his separate internal organs, on first coming into foetal 
existence, assumes the lowest type of the same organ in the animal 
kingdom ; and it is only by successive periodic transformations that 
it gradually approaches to the degree of completeness in which we 
find it in tlie new-born child. The heart of the embryo infant is a 
mere canal, nearly straight at first, and tiien slightly curved, cor- 
responding exactly with the simplicity of heart of insect life — tliat 
of the snail, and other insects of the lowest cruslacea tribe, for 



BY LEGAL A UTEOEITY. 11 

example. And not the heart alone, but each and all of the several 
organs and systems of the body are brought to their perfection by 
periodic additions and superadditions of the simpler and more 
complex parts of the same organs and systems of the several 
orders of animals, from the least noble to the highest class of all, 
the raammaUa, of which man is the head. Man, proud man ! then 
commences liis foetal life in reality, a worm ! and even when he has 
come into the world, and has breathed and cried, it is long before 
the child possesses the mental intelligence of many of the adillt 
brutes. In this respect man is, for a period, lower than tlie monkey, 
the monkey he so hates and despises for its caricature likeness of 
himself Between the same man in liis maturity and his animal 
fellow-creatures, we perceive many diiierences ; the resemblances, 
being infinitely more numerous, escape our memory. 

Are not the higher order of animals, and most of the very 
lowest, propagated by sexes ? Does not the female endure her 
period of travail like woman, and produce and suckle her young in 
a similar manner ? Have not animals senses to see, hear, smell, taste 
and touch, and has -not each its respective language of sounds and 
signs by which it conveys its meaning to the other individuals of its 
race ? Nay, have not animals many of man's passions and emo- 
tions, most of his sympathies and antipathies, liis power of choice 
and resistance, the knowledge, by conqmrison^ who is their friend 
and who their foe — reflection, v/hom to conciliate, whom to attack ; 
Avhere to hide, and when to show themselves; the memory of injury 
and kindness ; imitation^ and consequent docility — in some instances, 
simulation and dissimulation, each pursuing its own mode of artifice? 
Do not tlieir young, too, as in the instance of the child, gambol and 
play, and like it leave off both as they grow older for other plea- 
sures? And yet thei'e are persons of a temper so unpliilosophical 
as to deny them mind ! Does man possess a greater mental superi- 
ority to the dog, or as great as the dog has over the oyster ? Of 
mental, as of physcial power, there are gradations. If we have stu- 
pid and clever men, so have we stupid and clever animals, accord- 
ing to their respective races. But there are dogs that will observe, 
calculate and act more rationally than some human fools you may 
see every day. When did you find the dog i:)rostrating himself 
before a figure of his own making, asking it questions, supplicating 
it, and howling, and tearing his hair, because it answered him not ? 
Which of all the brutes quarrels with his fellow brute for going 
liis own road, whether circuitous or otherwise, to a town or village, 
that does not concern the other in the least ? Or which of all the 
animal tribes manifest such a paucity of intellect as, more than once, 
to mistake the same f ilse signs for real sense, imposture for integrity, 
gravity for wisdom, antiquity for reality ? Never, in my life, my 
friends, did I see the dog or monkey implicitly submitting himself 
to another of his race in matters that especially interested himself 
The monkey, for example, instead of trusting to the authority of 
his fellow-monkey, in a spirit of laudable curiosity, always handles 



12 THE umON RESTORED 

with his tiny fingers, and examines with his quick, prying eyes, every 
thing that takes his fancy ; in no single instance that I remember 
did I ever see him allow himself to be taken by the ears. Even in 
his language of chatter and gibber he never seems to mistake the 
meaning of his comrades, never takes one sign in two or more 
senses — senses the most opposite— so as to get confused and bewil- 
dered in his manner or his actions. Can you always say this of 
man ? Have you never heard him, even in his discussion on this 
v«ry subject, one moment charging every thing of animal intellect 
to Mind, at another to Instinct — instinct which, to have a raeanino- 
at all, must mean this — right action without experience — such as 
the infant taking its mother's breast as soon as born, or the chick 
picking up grain the moment it leaves the shell. True, the chick 
may mistake a particle of chalk for a grain of wheat, even as the in- 
fant may mistake his nurse's finger for the nipple of his mother. 
Experience corrects the error of both ; and this correction of error 
is one of the first efforts of the three mental faculties, Observation, 
Comparison and Reflection. It is with these identical faculties that 
both men and animals perceive a relationship between two or more 
things, and act in regard to such things according to their respective 
interests — rightly in some instances, wrongly in others. The cor- 
rection of to-day of the errors of yesterday is the chief business of 
man. As he grows in years, his experience of things enlarges, and 
his judgment as to their true value and relationship to himself be- 
comes more and more matured. The brutes, then, have the very 
same intellectual faculties variously developed, which M'hen stimu- 
lated to their utmost in Max, and with the assistance of higher 
moral faculties become Genius — if by genius is meant tlie discovery 
of relationship in nature hitherto undiscovered, and leading, as all 
such discoveries do, to practical results beyond cotemjjorary antici- 
l^ation — Newton's system and Watt's steam-engine for example. 

My friends, you now clearly see, that in the power of gaining 
knowledge by experience — call it Mind, Reason, Intellect, or what 
you please — the beast of the field partakes in common with man, 
though not in the same degree ; yet both partake of it in a degree 
equal to the particular condition of exigencies in Avhich they are in- 
dividually or socially placed. For animals, like men, have their 
cities and sentinels — their watchwords of battle, siege and defence. 
Man, less gifted in either of these respects, first fashioned his sword 
and shield, and his armour of proof. It was only after the experi- 
ence of centuries he reached, by higher mental efforts, to the know- 
ledge necessary for the construction of the musket, the cannon and 
the other n\unitions of modern warfare. Necessity was the mother 
of his invention here, as indeed in every other instance ; but by this 
also the lower animals profit. What but necessity enables our do- 
mestic animals to change their habits so as to live in peace, harmony 
or slavery with man? even as necessity obliges man enslaved to do 
and bear for his fellow men things the most repugnant to his nature 
How diflerent the habits of the domestic dog from the dog or wolf 



BY LEGAL AUTHORITY. 18 

of the prairie, from whicli he originally sprang ! In the wilderness, 
the one would all but perish for want, till stern necessity should 
teach him to hunt down his prey ; the other would require stripes 
and blows through successive generations before he could be tavght^ 
like the shepherd's dog, to come at his name, and to drive the sheep 
at his master's call, or arithmetically to single out from the herd 
two, three or more, and watch or urge them on at his bidding. To 
deny animal's mind is to deny them design, without which, putting 
mere instinct apart, neither men nor animals act in any manner or 
matter. The great Designer of the Universe, in the creation of 
the first crystal, showed this. He proclaimed it when he made the 
sexes of the vegetable kingdom ; when, by the zoophyte or plant- 
animal, he united the vegetable to the lowest link of the animal 
world he made his design still more manifest. When he further 
progressively developed his plan of insect, fish and reptile life, and 
added the higher animals last of all, before he completed the chain 
Avith Man, their master, he showed not only design, but unity of 
design ; and when to men and animals he gave a power neither the 
crystal nor the vegetable possesses — the power of following out de- 
signs of their own making — he imbued them both with a portion of 
liis Spirit, varying in degree ; but to each he gave it in a measure 
equal to their respective wants and necessities. Deny this, and you 
deny God — you deny God's works and words ; words upon which 
the question of interpolation can never arise: for every leaf of every 
plant is a letter of His alphabet ; every tree a combination of the let- 
ters cooiposing it ; and every hill, valley and stream — every tribe 
of men and animals, so many sentences by which we may perceive 
His will and deduce His law. The stars and constellations of 
stars, and their periodic motions, teach, even to our frail senses, the 
analogies which subsist in this respect between the motions of man's 
body and all the movements of Nature. In their harmony of design, 
they give us an insight into the Unity of the Eternal. And we 
find embodied in them a principle by which we not only may know 
the past and present, but to a certain extent read the future, in its 
dim outline of twilight and shadow. In all humility, then, let us 
inwardly prostrate ourselves before the Omnipotent : but let us at 
the same time beware of that outivard mock humility which too 
often leads to religious pride, and engenders any thing but Christian 
charity ; and let it rather be our delight to trace resemblances and 
harmonies than to see in Nature only discords and differences. The 
world, the Universe, is a Unity ; and in no single instance do we 
find a perfect independence in any one thing pertaining to it. Be- 
twixt man and the lower animals, we have traced, link by link, the 
chain of contiguity — mental as well as corporeal. 

Like them he comes into the world, and like them his body period- 
ically grows, decays, and dies. From the earth and to the earth, 
the matter composing our bodies comes and goes many tinies even 
in the brief space of our mortal existence. In this the human sys- 
tem resembles a great nation, the inhabitants of which, in the 



14 THE UNION RESTORED 

course of years, are constantly changing, while the same nation, 
like the body, betrays no other outward appearance of change than 
what naturally belongs to the periods of its rise, progress, maturity 
or tendency to decay. In this mirror, though imperfectly drawn, 
you may behold the harmony, connection, unity of all things. 

We now pass to the consideration of those alterations of the 
American Government, termed the United States, and periodic 
movements of the people. 

With Luther's insurrectionary upheaval in the religious world, 
commenced the mental and moral preparation of mankind for the 
acceptance of popular institutions and right of selfgovernment, 
the Democratic Principle of which Cromwell was the first forcible 
expression, and Napoleon Bonaparte, in his earlier triumphs over 
kin2;s and empires, the armed and irresistible assertion. False to 
theldeas which caused his elevation, this Napoleon was hurled from 
the throne he sought to build on the ruins and with the mate- 
rials of ]irostrate popular liberty ; and it was thus reserved by an 
AUwise Providence for this latest found continent of our earth, 
to give the first example of tliat truly popular system of govern- 
ment—soon to be the controlling idea of all nationalities— which 
had the moral sublimity and practical virtues of George Washmg- 
ton, Avho was educated in the University of Nature, to hold the 
reins and guide it through its experimental stage. Byron exclaims 
at the close of his Ode^to Napoleon: "Where shall the eye rest, 
weary of gazing on the great ; where find a glory that is not crim- 
inal, a pomp that is not contemptible ? Yes, there is a man, the 
first, the last, the best of all— the Cincinnatus of the West, whom 
envy itself does not hate. The name of Washington has been 
bequeathed to us to make humanity blush that such a man is alone 
in history." Is Washington as great as Byron makes him ? Yes, 
as we shall soon see, if we compare him with the most illustrious 
personages. Take, for example, that Caesar, who has dazzled men 
to such adeavee that each vies with the other in pardoning his 
crimes and bowing before the greatness of bis misdeeds. Washing- 
ton does not pale^before this hero of the Roman Empire. Doubt- 
less the American General had neither the mind nor the resources 
of the Conqueror of Pharsalia ; he lived in a poor and frugal com- 
munity, and his fellow-citizens resembled the contemporaries ot 
Cincinnatus more than those of Cicero ; but what a moral differ- 
ence there is between these two men, and considering, only! ohtical 
Genius, how great is the one and how small the other. If in these 
two rivals we consider what belongs to the man and what belongs 
to the nature of the age, I mean the will, Washington does not 
yield to Caesar. Once entered upon their career, neither ever 
quitted or drew back. Caesar, to impose his will on the world and 
to expel therefrom the very name of Liberty ; nothing restrained 
him ; he slew a million of men to attain his end. Washington 
souoht to defend and consolidate the Liberty of his country, and 
nothing arrested him either ; he braved the halter and ignominy to 



BY LEGAL AUTHORITT. 16 

free his menaced country ; he rejected with contempt the crown 
which his army offered him, and which he might have accepted 
without being taxed with ambition. A dictator, lie had no other 
care than Liberty, no other love than the Republic. Caesar and "Wash- 
ington both succeeded ; both founded an empire, and bequeathed 
to the future their example and their idea : their work will judge 
them. The despotism that Ca'sar established gave the omnipotence 
to one master, and condemned a whole people to live by the will 
of a single man. This reign of a day, by founding the Empire, 
cost the world centuries of irresistible decline. The imperial ad- 
ministration, one of the best planned systems ever invented, wore 
out Roman society to such a degree that even Christianity did not 
revive it ; new races were needed to regenerate the exhausted 
blood. Washington established a wise and well ordered Republic ; 
he left to the future, not the fatal example of triumphant crime, 
but the beneficent example of Patriotism and Virtue. In less than 
fifty years, thanks to the powerful impetus to Liberty, we have 
witnessed the rise of an empire, founded not on conquest, but on 
peace and industry ; an empire which, before the end of the cen- 
tury, will be the greatest in the civilized world, and which, if it 
remain faithful to the idea of its founders, if ambition does not 
arrest the tide of its fortune, will offer to the world the unheard 
of spectacle of a Republic of a hundred millions of men, richer, 
happier and more brilliant than the monarchies of the Old World. 
This is the work of Washington ! Despite all the lustre of his 
genius, Cresar has left a sinister name, which is the symbol of 
despotism. The name of Washington is greater than the founder of 
an Empire ; Washington opens a new era in history. Greater than 
Coesar ; he has undone the work of the Roman ; he has put an end 
to the fatal divorce Caesar introduced upon the earth ; he has resus- 
citated Liberty. And Avhile true merit is esteemed and virtue 
honored, mankind will never cease to revere the memory of this 
great hero; and, while gratitude has a seat in the human breast, 
the praises of Washington will dwell on every American tongue. 
But why do I attempt to eulogize the name of Washington when 
bards and poets have long since hung their harps on the willoAV in 
despair of expressing his just merits. I, of course, can add nothing ; 
as well might I light a taper to assist the effulgent rays of heaven's 
briglit luminary at noon-day to light the earth. But he is gone, 
and liis loss clothes a nation in heartfelt mourning, and we can 
now only say in the language of the poet, 

'' The car of victory, the phime, the wre.ith. 
Defend not from the bolt of fate the brave ; 
No note tlie cLirion of renown can breathe 

To charm the Ions: night of the lonelj' grave, 
K"or clieck the headlong haste of time's o'erwhelming wave." 

Enough has been said to demonstrate that the happiness and 
perpetuation of nations and governments do not consist in an 



16 TEE UNION RESTORED 

external show of pomp and grandeur, nor the apparent strength 
of their -svalls, hut very much depends upon the genial diflusion 
of light and knowledge in the minds of the people, and upon their 
honesty, integrity, virtue and patriotism. No one, in the least 
acquainted with history, will deny that insatiable ambition almost 
invariably leads its victim to ruin. The first Napoleon was not 
satisfied Avhen the diadem of France was placed upon his brow. 
He was controlled by an inordinate ambition, and pandering to that 
elernent of his nature, he sought to bring all Europe witliin his 
aspiring grasp, and St. Helena furnishes the sequel. The nature of 
Jeff. Davis, in this respect, is not unlike that which displayed itself 
so conspicuously in Napoleon. Davis attained a proud place among 
his countrymen, and was honored Avith positions that placed him 
almost on the topmost pinnacle of authority. But, like Napoleon, 
his ambition was unsatisfied, his craving for power and eminence 
was unappeased. He aspired to the position of chief ruler of half, 
perchance of all, the United States, and, Avith that object, before 
him, he hesitated at nothing, scrupled at nothing. He Avillfully 
branded the mark of treason upon his heart, he defiled the flag of 
the Union which he had gallantly fought under in Mexico, he 
sought to destroy the Government that had raised him from obscu- 
rity to high position, and connived at the greatest outrage against 
his country and her defenders. His insatiable thirst for power in- 
duced him to plunge his native land into the horrors of civil war. 
His overreaching aspirations filled his brain with the hopes of build- 
ing up an empire, of which he should be the recognized head, and 
he scrupled not to make his country a modern Golgotha, if only the 
great object of his ambition could be obtained by it. The " Con- 
federacy" which he attempted to erect at first gave promise that 
Jeff.'s dream of a slave empire would be realized. It expanded 
until nearly half the States of the Union embraced the dogma of 
secession. Then came the reaction, and the limits of Jeff.'s fabric 
beg. "« to contract. Gradually the vision of power faded, the area 
of the " Confederacy" dwindled away before the spirit of Northern 
patriotism, and Jeff. Avas aAvakened from his dream of ambition to 
find that he is circumscribed by bars and bolts to a dominion only 
ten by fifteen feet in extent, and bounded by the four substantial 
Avails of a prison cell. A confederacy compressed into such pro- 
portions is enough to make the light of Jeff.'s ambition burn low in 
the socket ; but the prospect that it will be still further contracted 
to six feet by two, and bounded by his mother earth, is enough to 
extinguish the most inordinate ambition of this bold and reckless 
man, of Avhom the assassin of Abraham Lincoln Avas but the im- 
personation. Deny it Avho will, this dastardly act came from the 
aristocratic circle of the South. Some profess to deplore the crime, 
but Jeiferson Davis, upon hearing it, took the language of another 
nnirderer : " If it Avere done, then 'tAVere better it should be Avell 
done." 

Since the days of Washington the nation has given birth to many 



BT LEGAL AUTHOBITT. 17 

men of worth and excellence, but none resembled him in head, in 
heart and purpose, more than Abraham Lincoln, who, in the full 
fruition of his glorious work, has been struck from the roll of living 
men by the pistol-shot of an assassin who had been educated up to 
this height of crime by the teachings of our " copperhead" oracles, 
and by the ambition of fulfilling those inslructions which he re- 
ceived from Richmond. Perhaps never in history has Providence 
been more conspicuous than in that recent procession of events 
where the final triumph was wrapped in the gloom of tragedy. It 
will be our duty to catch the moral of this stupendous drama. 

For the second time in our history, the country has been sum- 
moned by the President to unite, on an appointed day, in commem- 
orating the character and services of the dead. The first, as I 
have already told you, was on the death of Washington, when, as 
now, a day was set apart for simultaneous eulogy throughout the 
land, and cities, towns and villages all vied in tribute. More than 
half a century has passed since this early service to the memory of 
the Father of his Country, and now it is repeated in memory of 
Abraham Lincoln. Thus are Washington and Lincoln associated 
in the grandeur of their obsequies. But this association is not 
accidental. It is from the nature of the case, and because the i^art 
which Lincoln was called to perform resembled in character the 
part which was performed by Washington. The work left undone 
by Washington was continued by Lincoln. Kindred in service, 
kindred in patriotism, each was naturally surrounded at death by 
kindred homage. One sleeps in the east, and the other sleeps in 
the west ; and thus, in death as in life, one is the embodiment of 
the other. The two might be compared after the manner of Plu- 
tarch ; but it will be enough for the present if we glance only at 
certain points of resemblance and of contrast, so as to recall the 
part which each performed. Each was at the head of the Eepublic 
during a period of surprising trial ; and each thought only of ,''';e 
pubhc good, simply, purely, constantly, so that single hearted devo- 
tions to country will always find a synonym m their names. Each 
was the national chief during a time of successful war. Each was 
the representative of his country at a great epoch of history. But 
here, perhaps, the resemblance ends and the contrast begins. Un- 
like in origin, conversation and character, they Avere unlike also in 
their ideas, except so far as each was the servant of his country. 
The war conducted by Washington was unlike the war conducted 
by Lincoln, as the peace which crowned the arms of the one was 
unlike the peace which began to smile upon the other. The two 
wars did not difier in the scale of operations, and in the stamp of 
mustered hosts, more than in the ideas involved. The first was for 
National Independence ; the second was to make the Republic one 
and indivisible, on the indestructible foundations of Liberty and 
Equality. The first only cut the connection with the mother 
country, and opened the Avay to the duties and advantages of 
popular government. The second ivill have failed vnless it 2^erfor?)iS 
2 



18 TEE UNION RESTORED 

all the original promises of that declaration tvhich our fathers took 
vpon their lips ivhen they became a nation. In the relation of cause 
and effect the first was the natural precursor and herald of the 
second. National Independence was the first epoch in our history, 
and such was its importance that Lafayette boasted to the First 
Consul of France, that, though its battles were but skirmishes, they 
decided the fate of the world. 

Fellow-citizens, in the life and character of Abraham Lincoln 
you have discerned his simple beginnings, have watched his early 
struggles, have gratefully followed his consecration to those truths 
which our fathers declared, have hailed him as the twice-elected 
head of the Republic, have recognized him at a jDcriod of national 
trial as the representative of the vnfdfiUed promises of our fathers, 
even as Washington was the representative of National Independ- 
ence ; and you have beheld him struck down, at the moment of 
victory, when rebel resistance was everywhere succumbing. Rever- 
ently Ave acknowledge the finger of the Almighty, and pray that 
all our trials may not prove futile, but that the promises of the 
fathers may be fulfilled, so that all men shall be equal before the 
law, and government shall stand only on the consent of the gov- 
erned — two self-evident truths which the Declaration of Independ- 
ence has announced. Washington met the power of the British 
lion, and gave liberty and equal rights to the people of America. 
Lincoln met the power of private wrongs, and restored public 
I'ights to their original pvtrity. Thus, in truth, may it be said that 
Wasliington was the Father, and Abraham Lincoln the Saviour, of 
his country. In this mirror, though imperfectly drawn, you can 
plainly see that state sovereignty has been annihilated, and Abraham 
Lincoln consolidated a more perfect ZTnion, and all the nations of 
the world will acknowledge us a nation cemented and sealed by 
his blood. He has destroyed that great political heresy of State 
Rights. He has made a complete L^nion, which never existed 
before. We had a Union, but he has raised it more firmly on its 
centre under the blessed provisions of the Constitution. He has 
developed the war-power of this Constitution — its power over the 
national finances — the power of the people to prevent individual 
aspirations from interfering A\'ith the safety of the State. He has 
established the right of the Government to the services of eA'ery 
citizen in sustaining the nation. These principles, so firmly estab- 
lished, will live in history as fundamental truths to protect this 
nation against internal assault and external enemies. He has ac- 
complished the regeneration of this country ; regenerated its 
nationality in freedom. Death was necessary to resurrection and 
immortality. The seed must die before it can be quickened into 
fruitfulness ; God's hand lifted up our nation to make it a power 
among nations. Its representative died tliat the cause of freedom 
might live ; and it shall live until the coming of Him whose right it 
is to reign shall abolish all human governments. In a pure and 
high-toned Christian spirit, directed by the hand of God, our 



BY LEOAL AUTHORITY. 19 

lamented Chief Magistrate drew the line of demarkation between 
public and j^rivate rights, which severed for ever (as I hope in God) 
special privileges from the hand of power. Believing, as he did, 
that the Constitution had established a government, with the 
highest attribute of sovereignty, and that to subvert its authority 
was rebellion, and to " levy war against it was treason," and being 
guided by the events, as God had showed them to him, he has 
proved to the world that there is no power extrinsic to that of the 
National Government by which its powers can be rightly resisted 
or its obligations impaired, and that the authority of the United 
States within its sphere is supreme. This is a vital 2JrincipIe. It 
was so regarded by the framers of the Constitution, and they have 
secured it in the most explicit and emphatic terms : " This Consti- 
tution, and the laws made pursuant thereunto, shall be the 
SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND ; and the judges in every State shall be 
bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the 
contrary notivithstanding .'''' And, to render this effective, they pro- 
vided that the Government which they had created should be the 
final judge of the extent of its own powers and the meaning of its 
laws. To this end they established a judicial department, as a co- 
ordinate branch of the Government, to expound and enforce the 
provisions of the Constitution and acts of Congress. Nor is this 
all. In order that the laws of the United States should be practi- 
cally, as well as theoretically supreme, they created an Executive 
Department, clothed with full power to enforce the laws. And 
thus a Government, paramount in all its departments, was estab- 
lished. Therefore, fellow-countrymen, be assured that the Consti- 
tution and the laws made imder it cannot be overridden by State 
laws. The laws of the United States bear the same relation to a 
State as the laws of a State do to an individual. Remember this, 
and do not forget it in the practical application. 

The disaffected, at different times, in various sections of the 
Union, have earnestly sought for some legal mode of resisting legis- 
lative authority ; but it has been in vain. There is no such anoma- 
lous middle ground between submission and rebellion ; and this last 
extreme 'has, at last, been reached ; secession is but another name for 
rebellion. It is vain to contend for a constitutional right to over- 
throw the Constitution, and legal right to destroy all law. This 
may serve as a glass for all true sons of Columbia to behold, not 
only the absui'dity of these distinctions, but also the utter nothing- 
ness and vanity of the many disputes that daily occur in politics, 
Avhether municipal and federal acts, resembling each other, and 
amenable to the same eternal principle of law, should be called by 
one name or another. In the language of Hobbs : " Words are 
wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them ; but they are 
the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Ai'is- 
totle, a Cicero, a Thomas Aquinas, or any other doctor." 

It is often said that the Constitution does not contemplate mak- 
ing war upon a State. If by this is meant only that a State, as 



20 TEE UmOK RESTORED 

a political body, is not to be compelled to execute the laws of the 
TJnited States, it is true ; because these laws act directly upon indi- 
viduals, and are not to be enforced by State authority, but by 
National instrumentalities. In other words, we have a Govern- 
ment and not a mere confederacy. 

But if by the proposition that the Constitution does not contem- 
plate war upon a State, is meant that the authorities of the United 
States cannot be maintained or the laws enforced, if a State organ- 
ization interpose to annul them, or protect its citizens in doing so, 
nothing could be more erroneous. The Constitution imquestion- 
ably contemplated this very contingency of adverse State inter- 
position or legislation, and provided against it and for the National 
supremuc]], in the clear and imperative language which has already 
been quoted. This supremacy may be maintained by the whole phys- 
ical power of the nation, and whoever offends against the laio is subject 
to its penalty, in whatever official robes or insignia lie may be clothed. 

The supremacy of the laws of this country have been maintained 
by the prowess of Americans, and the people of this country have 
satisned themselves that they have a Government. The question 
which will now cause some discussion is tlie re-organization of 
States which have been in rebellion against the Government. But 
they are not the only States — all having been regenerated require 
reconstruction. Special privileges by legislation and Slavery, the 
first an arrogated, and the second a ceded private wrong, which 
were interfering with the rights of States, now lie prostrate in the 
cold embrace of death, and their dead bodies remain to be expelled 
from our legislative and judicial tribunals where they disgrace 
American law. 

We have yet to deplore a faction in our midst, who ai'e mean and 
dishonest enough to advocate the repudiation of the National debt, 
another word for rebellion. " Like causes," philosophers assure us, 
" produce like elFects ;" you will therefore be prepared to meet the 
repudiator of the public debt, as you have met the advocate of 
secession ; you will indignantly repel the unfounded suggestion. 
It is a violation of the eternal principle of law, and I believe it is 
not commendable for any man in this country to counsel in direct 
violation of the imperative language of the Constitution, " That 
2)rivate property shall not be taken for public use without just com- 
pensation." This question is easily settled under the first general 
maxim of interpretation — that it is not allowable to interpret what 
has no need of interpretation. — [Vattel, Book II., Ch. XVII, 
Sec. 26.) 

Degraded and fallen must be that man, who, in his sober moments, 
could advise the American people — a people rich in resources, pos- 
sessed of a high sense of National honor, the only free people on 
earth, and this, too, in the face of an observing world — to impair 
the obligation of a contract by taking private property for public 
use without just compensation ; and in many instances from honest, 



BY LEGAL AUTEOniTY. 21 

hard-working people ; while on the other hand, they allow a ques- 
tionable class of men who have obtained millions through fraud and 
deceit, and thus, to say the least, have technically aided rebellion, 
to enjoy, uninterrupted, their ill-gotten gain. For instance, men 
contract with the Government to furnish its defenders (the sol- 
diers) with good and wholesome provisions for a stipulated sum — 
but heedless and unmindful of the sacred covenants in contracts — 
influenced by that sordid principle in man denominated as " the 
root of all evil," they violate the truth in that contract by furnish- 
ing inferior provisions, and thereby weaken the defence of the Gov- 
ernment by rendering the soldier less able to endure the fatigue of 
battle, thus aiding and assisting the enemy ; and this is not all, the 
Government is robbed of a large amount of money which has to 
be paid by the people. Now, instead of advocating the repudiation 
of the Public Debt, in which individuals are equally bound to pay 
out of the property acquired under the protection of its laws, as 
they are to defend it against internal assaults and external enemies 
with their lives, both of which was made manifest during the admin- 
istration of Abraham Lincoln, it appears to me there would be 
more logic, if not sense, in thus advocating the confiscation of the 
property of all men who have taken the advantage of this vile 
attempt to assassinate our Political Life, to rob and plunder the 
Government. Aside from the Constitution, this Government can- 
not repudiate the public debt under the rule of common law. 
*' The master is responsible for the act of the servant." The 
people, who, by the way, constitute the Federal Government, are 
responsible for the acts of all the servants in their employ, and 
those servants personally responsible to the people, who by the 
principles of this Government constitute their master. In the lan- 
guage of Andrew Johnson, the time has arrived when the Ameri- 
can people should understand this fact. 

When we come to consider the ridiculous controversy which men 
have entered into on the subject of repudiation, and seriously reflect 
that all their arguments have tended to show a total want of com- 
mon-place knowledge, we ought to hide ourselves from the derision 
with which foreigners must look upon our credulity. Among those 
who have been thus employing themselves, I must not forget to 
notice JeflT. Davis, who was one of the first to start the scheme, 
when he endorsed the repudiation of the State debt of Mississippi. 
From that moment his career has been an onward one of infamy, 
until at last he repudiated his manhood, and took refuge under a 
petticoat, to be dragged thence before the tribunals of his country 
to be tried for the crimes and treason he had been guilty. Davis 
is a fair specimen of that proud class who scofted at Abraham Lin- 
coln as unfit for his station. Not the rich and proud, but the poor 
and lowly, will be the favorites of an enfranchised Republic. The 
words of the prophet will be fulfilled : " And I will punish the 
people for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity, and will lay 
low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a man more pre- 



23 TEE UNION EESTORED 

cious than fine gold ; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir." 
I catch these sublime words of prophecy, and echo them back as 
the assurance of triumph : 

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? 
Like a swift, fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, 
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, 
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave. 

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, 
Be scattered around and together be laid ; 
And the young and the old, and the low and the high, 
Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie. 

The infant and mother attended and loved ; 
The mother and infant's aflection who proved ; 
The husband that mother and infant who blessed, 
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest. 

The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne ; 
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn ; 
The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave, 
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave. 

The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap ; 
The herdsman, who climbed with his goats i;p the steep ; 
The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread, 
Have faded away like the grass that we tread. 

So the 'multitude goes, like the flower or the weed. 
That withers away to let others succeed ; 
So the multitude comes, even those Ave behold, 
To repeat every tale that lias often been told. 

For Ave are the same that our fathers have been ; 
We see the same sights our fathers have seen ; 
We drink the same stream and vicAV the same sun, 
And run the same course our fathers have run. 

The thoughts Ave are thinking our fathers Avould think ; 
From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink ; 
To the life Ave are clinging they also Avould cling ; 
But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing. 

They loved, but the story Ave cannot unfold ; 
They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold ; 
They grieved, but no Avail from their slumber will come ; 
They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb. 



BT LEOAL AUTUORITY. 23 

They died, aye ! they died ; we things that are now, 
That walk on the turf that lies over their brow 
And make in their dwellings a transient abode, 
Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road. 

Yea ! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, 
"We mingle together in sunshine and rain ; 
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge, 
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge. 

'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, 
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, 
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud, 
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? 

Fellow-citizens, your task is before you — mourn not the dead, 
but rejoice in his life and example. Rejoice as you point to this 
child of the people who was lifted so high that Republican institu- 
tions became manifest in him. Rejoice that through him emanci- 
pation of those two worms that were gnawing at the vitals of the 
Republic — those two private wrongs that Avere encroaching on 
public rights — Slavery and Special Privileges was proclaimed. 
Above all, see to it that his constant vows are fultilled, and that the 
promises of our fathers are maintained ; see that you maintain invi- 
olate that contract signed by them with a pen of diamond dipped 
in that sacred fountain of Principle in which they sought Security 
and Justice. Pride, falsehood and deceit had no point within their 
breast from wiiich its radii could diverge. That towering monster, 
Falsehood, should never pollute American tongues. All writers on 
constitutional and statutory construction agree that the meaning 
of the framers is the Constitution and the Statute. What then did 
the framers of the Constitution mean by the following language : 
" Congress shall make no laws abridging the freedom of speech or 
of the press ?" Did they mean to give you an unlimited permission 
to slander the Government and its officers at your pleasure and take 
refuge behind the letter (which is but the shadow of the spirit), and 
plead the above language in bar ? Remember that the common 
law was adopted by the framers of the Constitution as the law of 
our land, barred only by statute, which is well known to all 
lawyers. And we are informed by the Hon. Ogdcn Edwards 
that the common law was conceded by the people of England to be 
the grand charter of liberty. And this very able jurist, in his lec- 
ture on Legal Science, declared, " that the Common Law was, as it 
were, the title deed by which men held their rights, and tliat the 
faults and errors arising under the common law are more frequently 
from the ignorance of judge.s and the prejudice of jurors than from 
the common law itself." And its author. Sir William Blackstone, 
informs us that the common law Avas dictated by God himself, 
therefore binding over all the globe. The immortal Cicero long 



24 TEE UNION RESTORED 

since observed : " In every thing the consent of all nations is to be 
accounted the Laiv of Nature, and to resist it is to resist the voice 
of God." And, believe me, the Common Law is as much the Title 
Deed by Avhich the Federal Government holds its rights as that of 
an individual, and was no doubt intended by the framers of our 
glorious Constitution as the legal remedy against the abuse of truth, 
which our fathers intended to be freely spoken, printed and dis- 
cussed on all public matters. On the contrary, in private matters, 
the citizen is held in restraint from the fact that malice is inferred 
of which the law does not and cannot take cognizance.. Is this 
question, then, completely settled in the negative ? Certainly it is 
settled to the satisfaction of all who pin their faith to mere human 
authority. But human authority seldom settled any thing with 
me ; for whatever I have had an interest in knowing the truth, 
I have generally ap])ealed from the decree of that unsatisfactory 
court to the less fallible decision of the court of fact. And what 
does fact say in this instance ? Fad says, that the Constitution is 
a piece of God Almighty's law, sought not in precedent but in 
principle by those venerable fathers in tlieir united appeal to Nature 
— for to Nature — eternal Nature must Truth ever make her first and 
last appeal. But how do I know all this, you will ask — I who hold 
modern legislation in horror ! I will tell you truly — I first guessed 
it ; for I could not suppose that Government, unlike every other 
great revolution of matter could be either less than attraction which 
brings things or their atoms into closer proximity, or place them 
by the force of repulsion at a greater distance from each other. Still 
not being a jjerson easily satisfied Avith guess-work, I took the 
trouble in this particular instance to interrogate Nature. And as 
sure as the sun ever shone on this earth, Nature completely verified 
the fact of my anticipation, that attraction and repulsion are the two 
grand forces by which, not the motions of this Government only, 
but the motions of the Universe are kept in control. They are the 
two powers or forces, male and female, which not only produce 
motion everywhere and in every thing, but are endowed with the 
Divine power of creating and forming every thing in nature — the 
solar systems and their mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. 
What is amhition and worldly disgxist, but a modification or efiect of 
attractive and re2nthive influence. For example: ambition, by its 
attractive influence, brings things or their atoms into closer prox- 
imity. On the contrary, worldly disgust, by its repulsive influence, 
places them at a greater distance from each other. Therefore, let 
babblers beware how they commit themselves in this matter ; let 
them fully understand, that when they deny the duality of motion 
in all things, or that the Constitution in the abstract is deficient, they 
not only arraign God for His goodness, but expose at the same time 
their utter ignorance of His laws. Where men have not examined, 
surely it were only policy to be silent. 

But I anticipate a question Avhich has been put to Moses, to 
Socrates, to Gallileo, to Columbus, to every man that has presented 



BT LEGAL AUTHORITY. 25 

tlie face of Independence, and which . green-eyed Envy never yet 
has failed to accompany with the sneer of detraction : " Who are 
you, that yon dare to presume to know more than we ?" Free from that 
cowardly, bastard modesty, which trembles to own its competency 
before the scoru of malevolence, I frankly answer as a freeman, that 
I set out with the cardinal principle that miyht and riyht belong, 
equally and exclusively, to the People ; that in them resides all 
sovereignty ; that there is no power on earih wliich may rightly 
subject them to any laws or restraints, of body or mind, which they 
choose not to adopt for themselves ; that government is for their 
own comfort and protection, and not for the special benefit of the 
governors ; that magistrates are servants and officeholders' ar/ents 
w^hom the People create and at pleasure control or remove. That 
they are intrusted with temporary duties for the execution of 
which they are responsible to the People as their masters, and the 
People responsible for the act of their servants. 

This subject is one of great interest, of which it behooves the 
American people to be fully informed, but which it is to be feared 
is more frequently spoken of than understood. The mass of our 
citizens are so much engaged in their private affairs that liiis great 
matter is in no considerable degree neglected. 

Suffer not yourselves to be cheated by an echo, or led by party 
for party purposes. Do not be deceived by the jiretense of morbid 
sympathizers with secession, that because the Southern Confederacy 
has been forced to surrender, our Government ought to abandon 
her ground. That ground was taken to resist two great and cry- 
ing grievances, the attempt to strangle the inlant breath of the 
Declaration, " That all men are horn free and equal,'''' and the special 
privileges, and extensive combinations of selfish interests enforced 
under a protecting statute. Fellow-countrymen, arouse from your 
lethargic slumber, and proclaim in a voice like many thunders, 
the spirit of tyranny cannot exhibit itself in this country by 
monopolizing legislation or title or rank. Orders of nobility, primo- 
genitive rights, inherited rank and birth-right jDrivileges of every 
kind, have been exterminated by the bravery and wisdom of our 
patriotic ancestors. Americans are brethren, and among brethren 
there exists no invidious distinction. By the principles of this 
Government a king is reminded that though a crown adorns his 
head and a sceptre his hand, yet the blood in his veins is derived 
from the common parent of mankind, and is no better than that of 
the humble individual. It acknowledges Christ as the only Poten- 
tate, King of kings, and Lord of lords. Then hail, thou glorious 
principle of Liberty, bright transcript of all that is amiable ! Hail, 
thou blest in political science which so beautifully exemplifies the 
Church of Christ ! Welcome ye delightful mansions where all 
enjoy peace, tranquillity and liberty to worship the great Giver of all 
good gifts and graces according to the dictates of their conscience, 
to conform to His will, and to conduct themselves as under the All- 
Seeing Eye ! Welcome ye blessed retreats where the poor and 



26 THE UmON RESTORED 

oppressed flee for security, and where is dispensed freedom and 
equality to those unfortunate exiles from their homes and their 
friends, with imbounded liberality ! Welcome sacred habitations, 
where privileged gentlemen never dwell, where all men politically 
meet on a level ! I say unto you, lift up your heads, ye sons and 
daughters of Columbia ! The Lord of hosts is with you, whose 
arm is not shortened. The Lamb is upon Mount Zion with his 
hundred-forty-and-four-thousands, gathering his numberless host 
from the four winds. Cast off all unrighteous and selfish interests. 
Let not the love of this world's goods weigh you down. Stand 
upon the watch-tower ; put on the whole armor of God ; give no 
place to the Devil ; quench all the fiery darts of the wicked within ; 
then will ye not fear what man, or the sons of men, can do imto 
you ! The God of Jacob is y^our refuge, who will break the bow 
of the ungodly, and snap the spears asunder, and burn their chariots 
in the fire, and make desolation in the earth. H«e is fulfilling the 
promises of old made to His chosen, who will give nations for them, 
and people for their life. I say, ye sons and daughters of the lanct 
of equal rights and equality, stand faithful, and be valiant for 
Liberty find Truth upon the earth. For it is against it they are 
fighting within and without, that it might fall and be extinguished 
from tlie earth, and that equity and righteousness may not enter 
the nations who have said in their hearts, " Come, let us kill the 
heir, and the inheritance will be ours." But in vain do the heathen 
rage, and the people imagine such foolish things. For their hope 
shall perish and their purpose be made void ; they shall never 
bring to pass the thoughts of their hearts, the Lord hath spoken 
it ; for the seed of evil doers, shall never be renowned. Wherefore, if 
ye hear of wars, or rumors, or commotions, or pestilence, or famines, 
or the rushing of the ungodly, like the noise of the raging sea 
which cannot rest, let not your hearts be troubled, the Lord of 
heaven and earth, who is above all, will rebuke the devourer for 
your sakes ; for your redemption draweth nigh, when ye see these 
things come to pass. 

So, fear God, and prize your precious privileges of equal rights. 
This is what I desire you all should enjoy, and you never can enjoy 
this in its fullness unless you maintain the principles and follow the 
examples of that long list of patriots and sages that signed the 
Declaration of Independence, and of those who framed the great 
charter of our liberties. 



BY LEGAL AUTHORITY. 27 



CHAPTER II 



I SHALL commence the subject of Reconstruction of the Union 
in the language of Andrew Johnson, President of the United States. 
In him we have a man of siraihxr origin with Mr. Lincohi ; equally 
a child of the people, equally in sympathy with their reasoning, 
and, perhaps, better informed as to the true condition and govern- 
mental necessities of the Southern States. Self-educated, and 
exalted by perseverance through years of laborious industry and 
sacrifice, no accident of a moment can be accepted by the judgment 
of our people as reversing Mr. Johnson's claim to the confidence 
and respect of the country. And I have yet to find the first man 
who lias any thing to say thus far against his Administration. I 
have not seen either Whig or Democrat, or any other stripe of 
politician in the country, since he assumed the reins of Govern- 
ment, who has aught to complain of Therefore it is difficult for 
me to meet or combat any objection to the Administration of Presi- 
dent Johnson. One notable thing has fallen mider my observation 
since he assumed the reins of power, and that is his proclamation 
in regard to the reconstruction of the Union. But I have not 
heard any opposition to that ; indeed, my friends, the principles 
upon which the proclamation was founded are the principles that 
were announced by Mr. Lincoln. It is not necessary for me to 
advance any argument here, but it strikes me that when the people 
nominated Andrew Johnson and Abraham Lincoln, it was on the 
avowed principle, that has been announced over and over again, 
that when the people of the Southern States laid down their arms 
they should again be received into the Union. Rebels have the 
power to forfeit their own personal rights, civil and political ; but 
they have no power, directly or indirectly, to work the destruction 
of a State, it being only bequeathed in trust to the people. We are 
only trustees, charged with sacred rights ; ours to use, ours to 
enjoy, but not ours to subvert ; possession in the people, but the 
title m. our fathers, who received them from the Eternal Father. 

President Johnson informs us " that the time has arrived when 
the American people should understand what crime is, and that it 
should be punished, and its penalties enforced and inflicted. Who is 
there here who would say that the assassin who has stricken fi-om our 
midst one beloved and revered by all should not suffer the penalties 
of his crimes ? Then if you take the life of one individual for the 
murder of another, and believe that his property should be confis- 
cated, what should be done with him or them who have attempted 
the life of a nation composed of thirty millions of people ? Yes, 
treason against a State, treason against all the States, treason 



28 TEE UNION RESTORED 

against the Government of the United States, is the highest crime 
that can be committed, and those engaged in it should sufier all its 
penalties. Treason must be made odious ; treason mnst be jmnished 
and impoverished. They must not only be punished, but their social 
power must be destroyed. If not, they will still maintain an as- 
cendency, and may again become numerous and powerful ; for in 
the words of a former Senator of the United States, "When 
traitors become numerous enough treason becomes respectable." 
And I say, that afier maling treason odious, every Union man and the 
Government sho^ild be remunerated out of the pocket of those v)ho have 
inflicted this great suffering vjjon the country. But do not understand 
me as saying this in a spirit of anger, for, if I understand my own 
heart, the reverse is the case. And while I say this, as to the lead- 
ers' punishment, I also say leniency, conciliation and amnesty to the 
thousands whom they have misled and deceived. Some are satisfied 
with the idea that States are to be lost in territorial and other divis- 
ions — are to lose their character as States. But their life-breath 
has been only suspended, and it is a high constitutional obligation 
we have to secure each of these States in the j^ossession and enjoy- 
ment of a Republican form of government. A State may he in the 
Government with a peculiar institution., and by the ojyei-ation of rebellion 
lose that feature. But it was a State when it went into rebellion, 
and when it comes out without the institution, it is still a State. / 
hold it as a solemn obligation in any one of these States where the rebel 
armies have been beaten back or expelled — I care not how small the 
number of Union men, if enough to man the Shijy of State — I hold it, I 
say, a high duty to protect and secure to them a Mepiiblican form of 
Government. This is no new opinion. It is expressed in conformity 
with my understanding of the genius and theory of our Govern- 
ment. Then, in adjusting and putting the Government on its legs 
again, I think the progress of this work should pass into the hands 
of its friends. If a State is to be nursed until it gets strenofth, it 
must be nursed by its friends, not smothered by its enemies. Now, 
permit me to remark, that, while I have opposed dissolution and dis- 
integration on the one hand, on the other, I am equally opposed to 
consolidation, or the centralization of power in, the hands of a few." 
These are President Johnson's words, and these are my views. 
The reconstruction I meditate, unlike many extremists, is at least 
free from the imputation of disorganizing the States in rebellion ; 
on the contrary, I would restore all their citizens who have not 
forfeited their rights, by their own voluntary act, to their original 
nationality. The voters, in whose hands noAv lies the power of the 
ballot, should take warning of other nations ; they should consider 
the ways of God in his creation of the Universe, and remember 
that he made every thing to give comfort and delight, and minister 
to the wants of all ; and that he did not intend the few should con- 
trol and sport with the many for the furtherance of their own 
private and selfish ends. 

On the loth of April (a day for ever to be held in inauspicious 



BY LEGAL AUTHORITY. 29 

remembrance, like the dies Aliensis, in the annals of Rome), the 
citizens of Charleston claimed it as their special privilege to make a 
target of the standard of United America, the pledge of her Union 
and the symbol of her poAver, which so many gallant hearts had 
poured out their life-blood on the ocean and the land to uphold. 
Then, for the first time, a State portrayed the appalling fact that 
political demagogues had, up to that hour, been, to a man, in all 
but utter darkness, treading the paths of special privileges, which 
leads to misery's most gloomy abodes. Was it, then, wonderful 
that an event so startling should fall upon the American people 
like a thunderbolt. This aroused all Amei'icans from their lethargic 
slumber, and stimulated them to cry, in a voice like many thunders, 
Down with the power of this traditional ceded monster Slavery 
and consign him irrevocably to the shades of oblivion. These 
resolutions were immediately disseminated through the North and 
West ; the tongue and pens of high-minded patriots and well-in- 
formed men labored incessantly in the holy cause ; the fire of liberty, 
like a volcanic eruption, blazed forth from the press and burst forth 
with indignation from the head and hearts of Young America ; the 
flames spread far and wide, and, like volcanic lava, it seemed to 
scorch and wither every thing that interposed to impede its onward 
progress, overthrowing that ceded monster Slavery in its march and 
casting him into the shades of oblivion. 

Yes, let oblivion be the dungeon for this voracious spoiler of 
equal rights, and let a timely, considerate and firm resolution be 
his jailer, and reason and philanthropy be the chains that bind him 
in his cell in such a manner as to render escape impracticable ; then, 
and not till then, can American freemen boast of equal rights in Icno 
and in fact. 

But in order to accomplish this glorious work of incarceration, 
it may be necessary that we take a retrospective view of a few by- 
gone years to enable us to call to mind scenes sufficiently dreadful 
to make us stand aghast, and view with awe and astonishment the 
crimes which are insej^arably connected with the baneful practice 
of privileging gentlemen by Legislature ; and this, too, by a people 
who have no legal right to give one man or set of men special 
privileges that others do not enjoy ; and it follows that our servants 
who are sent to represent their masters in the legislative halls 
have no authority to exceed the rights of the people unto whom 
they are personally responsible. This eternal principle of equal 
rights, being derived from God, is supreme, and will, if rightly 
aj)plied, neutralize the virus of arrogated power now lurking behind 
the shield of special statute, and stimulate the people to substitute 
in lieu thereof public statutes of limitation autiiorizing the Ibrnux- 
tion of corporations, and thus open the avenues which leads to the 
fundamental spring of free and unalloyed liberty, from which issues 
a strong and limpid stream, bearing on its bosom that righteous 
and American principle of equal rights — the bounteous gift of 
Nature's God — to that small host of infant freemen who, at the 



30 THE UNION EE8T0RED 

I'isk of all that was dear to man, secured by deed and conveyed 
them in trust to their political heirs and assigns for ever. These 
sacred covenants Abraham Lincoln maintained and 2^resented to 
the wicked disciples of a false but unwavering monopoly, as the 
beacon of the triumph of enduring faith over the agonizing pangs 
of oppression. As yet I have only assailed the principle of that 
system of arrogated power Avhich is incorporated under the sanc- 
tion and bound together by special statute, carefully avoiding indi- 
vidual attack. If it be said I have used language too strong for 
the occasion, I answer in the words of Burke : " When ignorance 
and corruption have usurped the ^^ro/essor's chair ^ and placed them- 
selves in the seats of science and virtue, it is high time to speak 
out. We know that the doctrines of folly are of great use to the 
professors of vice. We know that it is one of the signs of a cor- 
rupt and degenerated age, and one of the means of insuring its 
further corruption and degeneracy, to give lenient epithets to cor- 
ruption and crime." 

Lord Bacon informs iis, that if disciples only knew their own 
strength they would soon find out the weakness of their masters. 
What led him to this conclusion ? What but the fact, that, with 
all his ability, even he (Lord Bacon) had been duped by his 
teachers ? And why did Des Cartes say that no man could possibly 
pretend to the name of philosopher who had not, at least, once in 
his life, doubted all that he had been previously taught ? He, too, 
had been hoodwinked by his pretended masters in philosophy. But 
yoK, perhaps, will say that all these took place in olden times ; the 
world is quite changed since then ; professors, political and civil, 
are now the most enlightened and respectable men alive ; they go 
to church, where they are examples of piety ; they never were 
found out in a lie ; are not subject to the passions of other men; 
have no motives of interest or ambition ; in fact, they are all but 
angels. Now, I only wish you knew the manner in which the most 
of these very respectable persons (Jeif. Davis, for example) get 
their offices ; the tricks, the party-work, the subserviency, meanness 
and hypocrisy practiced by them for that and other ends, and you 
would not so tamely submit your judgment to their theoretic 
dreams and delusions. Methinks if men were but seriously and 
conscientiously to observe the prepondering influence which rank, 
wealth and power have bestowed upon the upper classes of society, 
and how prone they are, at all times, to sacrifice their own judg- 
ments at the shrine of high-sounding titles, and comjmre them by 
the scale by which all things ascend to unity, on rejlecdon, they 
would almost despise themselves, and detest a system of real, but 
unobserved, and as such, unheeded slavery. It matters not what 
constitutes the master, if a man is in bondage he is a slave ! A 
mere glance at the passing events of the day, will, to a steady 
observer, convince us that Ave have all retrograded in every thing 
like manly and honorable feeling ; that we have become idolators 
of ihe worst character, and rendered ourselves subservient to the 



BY LEGAL AUTEORITY. 81 

"Will and wishes of tyrannical monopolies and imbecile i^oliticians. 
The parties of our day boastingly exult in the chimeras of delusive 
schemes ; they compound theories they do not understand, and 
insist that a slavish people, like modern Americans, should obey, 
humbly obey, a mass of folly garnished by a "worse than a super- 
stitious dread of disobeying caucus nominations concocted by 
knaves and countenanced by fools ! 

The greatest i^olitician, the most sublime orator, the most elo- 
quent -writer, the mightiest reasoner, the most heroic Christian of 
Adam's race, has said, "In the mouth of two or three witnesses 
shall every word be established." Yet there is a class of scornful 
sceptics, skillful in fighting with shadows, but not observant of the 
substance, who call themselves politicians, orators, eloquent writers, 
reasoners and Christians, who will not believe the testimony of a 
hundred witnesses that the regeneration of American law by Abra- 
ham Lincoln has removed precedent and re-established the principle 
of our fathers in the fullness of their declaration, and restored the 
Constitution under the first maxims of interpretation ; that he has 
regenerated American law, from the black and sombre shades of 
falsehood, to be reconstructed upon the everlasting and eternal 
principle of truth, and that his blood cries forth from the ground. 

In the appropriate language of Kossuth : " Gentlemen of the 
Bar, you have the noble task to be the first interpreters of the law ; to 
make it subservient to justice, to maintain its Eternal Frincijjles 
against the encroachments of facts ; and to restore those principles 
to life, whenever obliterated by misunderstanding or by violence, 
when darkness is cast upon the light of truth. It is one of your 
noblest duties to apply principle to show that an unjust custom is 
a corrupt practice, an abuse ! It was this eternal principle that 
pervades all Nature — the moving power of creation — that Abraham 
Lincoln maintained against the encroachment of rebellion ; and to 
this eternal principle — the common law of all matter — every change 
in the Government is subjected. That the power by which the national 
motions are influenced is the same that influences the motions of every 
kind of matter. Therefore you must by this time be convinced that 
the principle of American law is only declaratory of, and acts in subor- 
dination to, that all predominant law of God's eternal motion. For 
example, Ave read in the Gospel according to John, that "In the 
beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word 
was God." Now, it was the security of all men in equal and exact 
justice, settled by the eternal word of truth, that our fathers 
sought to build the fortress of our liberties. Justice and truth, 
united in one, form the eternal principle of the American Govern- 
ment. It was through the eternal motion of the word of God that 
our fathers declared all men to be free and equal ; and it was 
through the same eternal motion that Abraham Lincoln had his 
being ; it was through the same eternal motion that he ajiplied those 
hallowed words of our fathers, in the full finition of their truth, in 
equal justice to all. It was the violation of this eternal word of 



33 THE UmON BE8T0RED 

truth in contracts and affirmations that caused our wayward broth- 
er's to rebel. The violation of truth in contracts and affirmations 
and promises, has involved nations in destruction, undermined the 
foundation of public prosperity, blasted the good name and the com- 
fort of families, perplexed and agitated the minds of thousands and 
millions, and thrown contempt on the revelation of Heaven and the 
discoveries of science. 

If, according to Lord Bacon, " disciples do owe unto mastei-s only 
a temporary relief, and a suspension of their own judgment until 
they be fully instrvcied, and not an absolute resignation or perpetual 
captivity," you will not be sorry to escape from the thraldom of 
men who, when asked for bread, gave you a substance which, in 
the darkness of your ignorance, you could not by any possibility 
tell was a stone ! No longer mocked by mystic gibberish, you will 
now take your j^laces as judges of the law you formerly, implicitly, 
and without examination believed ; and according to the arguments 
which I have placed before you, you will pronounce between pre- 
cedent and principle — whether the division of American law into 
Federal and municipal is founded in Nature and reason, or whether, 
in the words of the same great philosopher, " all things do by scale 
ascend to unity." 

The written Charter of our National Liberties guards against 
a dynasty of hereditary rank or of legitimate descent. It has not, 
however, proved a safeguard against the dynasty of modern States, 
" that of associated wealth." It appears, then, that one channel re- 
mains for the spirit of aristocracy to pour its entire flood. Here 
facts encroach upon the eternal principles of law ; and here it be- 
comes our bounden duty to maintain the eternal prhiciples of laiv^ 
which escaped extermination by the bravery and Avisdom of our 
patriotic ancestors. 

One weak point exists in the fortress of our freedom — it is that 
which may be assailed by the engine of combined wealth. One 
order of nobility is not guarded against ; an order imentitled, it is 
true, but possessing attributes more radically injurious to popular 
rights than all the empty insignia of foreign aristocracy; it is based 
not upon the respect which is naturally paid to the descendants from 
a long line of illustrious ancestors, but upon the influence of that 
sordid principle in men, which the greatest of all reformers in relig- 
ion and politics characterizes as " the root of all evil." "Wealth is 
the grand engine of self-exaltation and of popular oppression in this 
country. Such is the nature of our institutions, that the love of 
domination, inherent in the human heart, has here no other outlet. 
Of all inventions which have been put in operation in this country 
to promote the inordinate accumulation of weath, the most exception- 
able are incorporated companies. The very object of an incorporated 
charter is to give its possessor artificial powers and special privileges 
not enjoyed by others, or an exemption from the liabilities to which 
others arc subjected. It may reasonably be doubted whether the 
whole system, from beginning to end, is not an infraction of the 



BY LEGAL AUTHORITY. 88 

Constitution. It is at least an evasion of its plain provisions, per- 
nicious in its influence upon industry and morals, and meriting the 
lirm resistance of all true lovers of equal rights. 

Under the dark and sombre shades of this custom, and pursuing 
the dubious paths of precedent, our youth grow up to man's estate 
with borrowed notions of polilical science from foreign govern- 
ments, and thus lose sight of the cardhial principle that all power 
belongs to the people. It is difficult for men, whose minds are thus 
formed, to feel that the undue superiority of wealth and rank they 
may chance to obtain, must devolve a corresponding privation upon 
other men who, by the laws of Nature and the principles of our 
Government, are equally with themselves entitled to the enjoyment 
of these privileges. These are hard lessons for men to learn who 
are born to the possession of superior social and intellectual enjoy- 
ments, and who forget that the nature of our institutions forbid 
them engrossing privileged superiority. In a government like ours, 
where all power and sovereignty rests with the people, the exercise 
of this right and the consequent expression of public interest and 
public feelmg is, on ordinary occasions, a matter of deep concern, 
but at a period like the present, of vital importance. Pause, vain 
man, and behold the ocean of misery and river of blood Avhich had 
their origin in the vmjust evasion of the plain provisions of the Con- 
stitution. Pause, I say, while you tread the spacious halls of those 
gorgeous mansions reared by the receipts of special privileges by 
the few who seek protection under the strong arm of arrogated 
power of the Legislature, with act on act, till the cope-stone inter- 
sect the floating clouds. Woe unto them, for by them have oftenses 
come. 

We should look with a jealous eye upon the usurpation of power 
in legislation, such as conferring public rights on individuals. It is 
an old saying that laws were never made for honest men : this 
would imply that all persons, encircled by any protecting statute, 
must be dishonest and a parcel of rogues : hence the j^rotection 
offered to those monopolists, the modern Shylocks of the nineteenth 
century. These men not being honest, are compelled to seek shelter 
under the strong arm of a disgraceful enactment, and veil their own 
stupidity under the garb of arrogated power, rendered mischievous 
and dangerous by law ! Under existing circumstances it becomes 
the imperative duty of the American Government to protect its 
weaker citizens from the encroachments of individuals, and more 
especially from the jointure of two or more, and withdraw all coun- 
tenance from a system calculated only to neutralize the Declaration 
of the Fathers, to say nothing of the daily recurring scenes of poor 
and helpless females struggling for support, perchance for some 
intirm and helpless relative against wealth and power in the hands 
of avaricious and soulless men, which everywhere meet our eyes ; 
and to extend its protection to the Declaration of our Fathers, by 
elevating it to that rank in public estimation to which its im- 
portance and merits so well entitle.it, that each one of its atoms 



84 THE UNION RESTORED 

may apply principle to show that the unjust custom of special 
statute to promote private interests is a corrupt practice and an 
abuse of the Cardinal Principle of Democracy. 

To illustrate this, I need only to refer you to the railroad monopo- 
lies which surround you on every side. Those monopolists, by their 
schemes, which are more fully developed every day, have now wound 
themselves up to such a pitch as cannot but rest the reins of Gov- 
ernment and cause mankind to sing the heart-pungent chorus of the 
prophetic tablet on the Mosaic harp of ten strings {the tea command- 
ments)^ " How is the gold become dim ! how is the fine gold 
changed ! !" Truly, these monopolies are an awful picture of human 
depravity ! they are the slaveholders of the North. Individual 
rights their slaves, and their special charter^ the lash by which they 
coerce the free-born American into submission to their arrogant and 
overbeai-ing rule. Not satisfied with the usurpation of municipal 
rights, these ambitious monopolists and heartless usurpers of the 
rights of men have carried their avaricious and delusive schemes 
into the Federal Legislature, in order that they might receive im- 
petus from the gigantic motive-power of the nation, and, sorrowful 
to relate, have succeeded in extending their peculating propensities, 
under the special privileges of the Federal Legislature — infringing 
not only on individual rights, but also upon the rights of the me- 
tropolitan State of New York. Remember, that a State bears the 
same relation to the Federal Government as an individual does to 
the State. This serves as a glass for all to behold the encroach- 
ment of the Federal Legislature upon the rights of the State of New 
York. That a citizen of a town is a citizen of a county, a citizen of 
a State, and a citizen of the United States has, by our recent strug- 
gle, been placed beyond dispute. Therefore, the Federal Govern- 
ment has an undoubted right to pass laws imposing a tax upon its 
citizens and regulations for collecting the same ; but when it assumes 
the appointing power of the collectors, it most assuredly exceeds 
its authority. Here, then, we have an infringement on the sacred 
rights oi all the citizens of the State of New York, and upon the 
individual slave who is lashed into obedience to the peculating man- 
date of si^ecial privilege. 

With the most childish simplicity some submit to the extreme 
tyranny of arrogated power. Instead of using the eyes that God 
has given them, they shut them in the most determined manner, 
that their ears may be the more surely abused. Silly, simple 
Brother Jonathan ! Why will you pin your faith to fallible and 
fallacious authority, when you may get the truth so easily by a 
little jiersonal examination ? To he able to discriminate in the 
choice of a servant, and to guard against political imposition, would 
not cost you half tlie time nor any thing like the trouble of master- 
ing the inflection of Vebero, or Amo amare ! Which kind of knowl- 
edge is of most use in life, I leave to pedants and philoso])hers to 
settle, meantime I shall beg your attention while I refer back to 
Jirst pri?ici2)les, for I believe it is a truth that those who do not refer 



BY LEGAL AUTHORITY. 35 

back to first principles will go to decay. What was the first prin- 
ciples of our lathers in the formation of this Govennnent ? It was 
equal and exact justice to all, quickened into life by the illuminating 
light of the eternal Word of Truth. What was the first principles 
of the Lord's people in an early day ? It was tlie principle of light 
and life ; an unerring principle that would always guide in tlie path 
of safety, and which will enable you, as it has me, " to restore the 
eternal principles of law to life, whenever obliterated by misunder- 
standing or by violence ; whenever darkness is cast upon the light 
of truth. But how can you brush away the cobwebs of ages from 
the windows of truth, without rousing the reptiles and insects that 
so long rejoiced in the darkness these cobwebs afforded — the 
bats and spiders, to whom daylight is death ? Truth, like a torch, 
does two things ; not only does it open up to mankind a i)ath to 
escape from the thorns and briers which surround them, but, break- 
ing upon a long night of ignorance, it betrays to the eye of the 
newly awakened sleeper the bandits and brigands who have been 
taking advantage of its darkness to rob and ^jlunder him. What 
has truth to expect from these ? What but to be whispered away 
by the breath of calumny ; to be scouted and lied down by the 
knaves and fools whom interest or intercourse has leagued with the 
public robber as his partizans ! " To abandon usurped power," 
says Robertson, in his History of Scotland, " to renoimce lucrative 
error, are sacrifices which the virtue of individuals has, on some oc- 
casions, offered to truth ; but from any society of men no such effort 
can be expected. The corruption of society, recommended by com- 
mon utility and justified by universal practice, are viewed by its 
members without shame or horror; and reformation never proceeds 
from themselves, but is always forced upon them by some foreign 
hand." 

Facts and experience convince us that Andrew Johnson was 
right when he said that the time had arrived when the American 
people should understand Avhat crime was. Yes, fellow-citizens, 
facts and experience convince us that it is time the reign of false- 
hood should cease ; it has ruled the world with an iron grasp ; 
thousands have been the victims sacrificed at its shrine. Let revo- 
lution, revolution in ideas, be the cry through mountain, glen, 
valley and plain, until this hydra of falsehood, combination and 
arrogated privilege be shorn of its fangs. Truth is mighty and 
must prevail, and commends itself to the human mind. Custom, 
interest and ignorance growl brutally or scoff" foolishly ; but growls 
and scoffs cannot subdue Truth, nor drive it out of the field ; it is 
destined to pursue the last of Error's whelps to a deeper den than 
that to which Putman drove the Pomfret wolf; and if it come forth 
again to light, it must come as Putman brought forth his — dragged 
out dead to feast the eyes of righteous execration. Thanks be to 
the untiring wing of wisdom, which has kept up the march during 
the reign of Abraham Lincoln's Administration, this thick and 
sombre cloud of arrogated power, conferred on a privileged few, 



86 THE UNION RESTORED 

has been virtually cast into the shades of oblivion, and there, to- 
gether with its ceded kinsman, slavery, chained for ever (as I hope 
in God) by an indignant and outraged people. 

" The day has broke, and God's just stroke 
On hypocrites must come ; 
Their many words and carnal swords 
Cau't save them from their doom." 

I will now, if patience Avill permit, give you a test by Avhich you 
may know the diiference between esrror and truth, the pettifogger 
or perverter of truth, and the shyster Avho sneaks around its 
eternal ]>rinciple — a test that cannot possibly deceive you — the re- 
sult of that inductive process which has elicited the cause of uni- 
versal motion, , 

We read in the London Times of March 7, in a leader, "That the 
Government at Washington announces that this very summer will 
see Federal unity not only restored but ready for Federal action. 
They make no secret of their intention to present an enormous list 
of clamages, which they are quite aware we shall not acknowledge. 
Their own public writers admit that the law, as settled by the chief 
American authorities, is against them, and that the precedents of 
American practice is against them ; but they hold that the unex- 
ampled magnitude of the occasion removes the question oitt of law 
and precedent, and justifies the Americans in making new prece- 
dents instead of following old ones." This unexampled magnitude 
of the occasion should convince the world of mankind of the im- 
propriety of standing still on the line of precedent while all around 
is in motion ; matter being ever in motion, contributes to the magni- 
tude of this unexampled occasion. Therefore, it would seem as if 
the most superficial observer could perceive that Americans have 
nothing to do with precedent, they being a motive people. But 
listen one moment to an American statesman, Avho not long since, 
stated in the Assembly of the United States, " that the slave trade, 
as well as slaves, was a very ancient practice, and that in former 
times, and in almost all parts of the world, it was carried on." It 
is ancient, no doubt. But there is another more ancient practice, 
not altogether unconnected with slave trading — I mean the practice 
of murder, and of the worst sort of murder, fratricidal murder ; 
for it does so happen that the first man that was born murdered the 
second, and that second-born was his brother. But I do not think 
you would deem it a palliation of the ofiense of murder or of fratri- 
cide to cite its imdeniable antiquity. 

When I, for one, reflect on the crime of depriving a man of his 
own free will in United America — in a Go\'ernment founded on 
equal justice to all — I am constrained to acknowledge that this crime 
was ceded upon the colonies by Great Britain, and that after the 
Kevolution it was through sufi'erance, under pecuniary difficulties, 
left to individuals to regulate by the State laws. There is one 
species of crime, however, upon which I must be permitted to say 



BY LE a AL AUTHORITY. 37 

a word — I mean the schemes of avaricious monopolists, incorporated 
by legislation into laws, to enable them to charge whatever their 
avarice may demand. From the present system of acquiring pro- 
perty, we may trace the loose disregard of duty in legislative halls, 
a corrupt administration of law in judicial functionaries, and a 
higher estimate set upon cunning and device than upon skill and 
integrity ; things incompatible with the stability of a Eepublic and 
destructive to the rights of man. 

Our secnrHy and the equal and exact justice to all, is founded on 
the principle of eternal truth, by those inspired fxthers to whom 
God was pleased to give the American decalogue — the Constitu- 
tion — which declares that no one shall be deprived of life, liberty, 
or property without due process of law. That no Legislature shall 
pass an ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of a con- 
tract. This Constitution has established a Government with the 
highest attributes of sovereignty, thus rendering the authority of 
the United States, within its sphere, supreme. This is a vital prin- 
ciple. It was so regarded by the framers of the Constitution, and 
they have secured it in the most explicit and emphatic terms. 
" This Constitution, and the laws made pursuant thereto, shall be 
the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall 
be bound thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of any 
State to the contrary notwithstanding." This vital principle of 
the Federal Constitution is the great controller of every court, and 
the true key to all good practice, reflecting a light in the midst of 
our judicial departments moi-e brilliant than the diamonds on a 
monarch's crown, and will, if understood aright, render more safe 
and easy the passage througli the intricate windings of the mazy 
labyrinths of American law, limiting the duties of the courts to the 
defining of law, and the rendering of equal and exact justice to all. 

And, further, to secure the rights in man derived from God, our 
fathers covenanted to and with each other that private rights shall 
not be taken for public use without just compensation, and entailed 
this imperative obligation by deed of trust on their heirs and as- 
signs for ever, thereby making it imperative on the Legislatures to 
fully secure each individual in his rights, and in no single instance 
to lend their aid in the encroachment of a private right on the 
public rights, or vica versa. These covenants of our fathers reflect 
a mutual lustre on each other, and, like the radii of a circle, they 
all diverge to the same point, and lead directly from the liberty of 
the individual man and individual Stafe up to the unity in the 
liberty of all these United States. 

Was there ever such a field in which to plant the seed of an 
immortal harvest ? So vast a ship, so richly laden with the world's 
treasures and riches, whose helm is ofi*ered to the guiding influence 
of every forming institution, Avith equal and exact j^istice, security 
on one side and the principle of eternal truth on the other ; and 
these, blended in one, form the eternal principle of American law. 
The true meaning of the word Principle is Unity. The practice 



38 THE UNION RESTORED 

of law, therefore, consists in maintaining this eternal princijiie 
against the encroachment of fads. In order to iUustrate this sub- 
ject, -I shall offer a few brief remarks on ancient usage. Not long 
since a case was decided by the Supreme Court of New York 
against the plaintifl", on the ground that it was not usual to allow 
grace on checks. This was a case where the check was dated 
ahead, and made payable at one of the banks in the city of New 
York, and protested by said bank on the day of maturity for non- 
payment. Subsequently, and within the limitation of three days, 
the maker called to take the check, and was informed that there 
was an additional charge for protest, to which he demurred ; and 
hence the suit to recover damages for the encroachment of the 
fact of protest upon the eternal principle of law. Not feeling dis- 
posed to submit to the decision of the Supreme Court of the State, 
he appealed to the Court having appellate jurisdiction, where he 
maintained the security of his rights, in justice with the principles 
of truth, against the encroachment of that protest, and was sus- 
tained by the Court of Appeals. 

A contracts "with B to build a house, A placing his own construe 
tion upon the words in the contract, and guided by the sordid prin- 
ciple of gain, misunderstands their righteous meaning, and thus 
violates the sacred truth in contracts to his pecuniary advantage. 
Here the eternal principle of law is obliterated by misunderstand- 
ing. And here B applies the security of his rights in justice to 
the principles of truth, and thus remedies the breach in the con- 
tract, and restores the principle of law to life. "When the truth, 
in the above contract, is willfully violated, then it is that the eternal 
principle of law is obHterated, and is to be restored to life as above. 
To accomplish this, and to relieve us from the undue weight of 
false pretense (false representations of all denominations), our late 
lamented President has handed to us the lever and fulcrum. Let 
us, then, make use of our instruments. This instrument was 
not manufoctured by special statute, but by the eternal principle 
of American law, under the motive influence of legal construction, 
in subordination to that all-pervading principle commented upon 
by Blackstone and appreciated and applied by Vattel, Book II., 
Chap, xvii., sees. 263 and 282. 

Vattel informs us that, by the first maxim of interj^retation, it is 
not allowable to interpret what has no need of interpretation. An 
attempt, therefore, to interpret a principle of law, written in plain 
English, would be an attempt to pervert the principle of law and 
the meaning of the writer, and constitutes what is commonly called 
pettifogging and shystering around an eternal princij^le, casting 
darkness upon the light of truth. Here, then, it becomes our 
bounden duty to apply the security of our rights in justice Avith the 
l^rinciple of eternal truth. One bright ray from this great luminary 
of union would send a world of such fog into the ocean of ob- 
livion. 

Blackstone informs us that " all human laws are only declara- 



BY LEGAL AUTHORITY. 39 

tory of, and acts in subordination to the divine law." Such being 
the fact, it must appear evident to every impartial reasoner, to 
every unprejudiced son and daughter of Cohunbia, from the hum- 
blest laborer to the most renowned statesman, theologian and man 
of science throughout the length and breadth of the land, front the 
regions of the Aroostook to the banks of the Rio Grande, from 
the shoi-es of the rock-ribbed Atlantic to California's golden sands, 
that, a^ God is no respecter of persons, it is an absolute violation 
and direct disobedience of the divine law to tax the title of pro- 
perty in a poor man to its full value under the heavy pressure of 
mortgage, and that mortgage taxed by government as the personal 
property of the rich man. It is no palliation of oppression to know 
that the private property of the poor man is exempt from tax — it is 
not equal and exact justice, for all are not situated alike : instance 
the farmer and the merchant. Here we should apjtly principle to 
show that this unjust custom is a corrupt practice and abuse. 

But, says one, the lawyer informs iis that custom makes law in 
the absence of all written law. So it does, so long as that cus- 
tom is within the limits of the eternal principle of Americ;4n law. 
Remember matter is ever in motion and ever changing ; but this 
principle is eternal and unchangable. This is the reason Kossuth 
declared it one of the noblest duties of the lawyer to apply prin- 
ciple to show that an unjust custom is a corrupt practice and 
abuse. 

According to Blackstone, the revealed law is of g.ieater validity 
than the moral law ; therefore, you have only to turn to the pages 
of Holy Writ and you have before you the law in all things jDcr- 
taining to government and rules for the regulation of society. 
The dis^iosal of riches, the necessity for laboi\ the folly of idleness, 
the evil of abominations of every grade, the fruits of intemperance 
in all things, the punishment of unholy lusts, the sin of him who 
taketh away the bread of the poor, and of him who enslaveth the 
people in political bondage — upon these, and upon all things wherein 
the mind of man has ever run, does this great book of God speak 
the language of inspiration in th« words of soberness and truth, 
and which,"if they were but observed, would lead to the interpre- 
tation of our Constitution in harmony with the security, justice and 
truth our fathers breathed into it at its first fjirih. As the spring flows 
from the fountain and partakes of its qualities, and as the shadow 
always accompanies the substance, and is produced by it, so the 
liberty of the individual man uniformly accompanies the security 
of the rights of all in the full majesty of equal and exact justice, 
Avith the principles of eternal truth blended in unity, and is pro- 
duced by the powerful influence which this governing principle 
exerfs over the mind. Thus, you see, we are governed by a law 
which pervades the whole moral universe wherever it extends, 
which can never be rescinded, and which, like the law of gravita- 
tion in the material world, connects all the individuals of which it 
is composed in one harmonious system ; one great principle binds 
them together ; God, in his unity, pervades them all. 



40 TEE UNIOK RESTORED 

We anticipate, from the administration of Andrew Johnson, an 
immediate passage of the gulpli which separates the present from 
what is to come, and bars the way from the world of to-day to the 
brighter world of the future. Onward is the law Avhich destiny 
has impressed upon the American people and the American Gov- 
ernment. Gravitation is not more inevitably the quality of matter 
than progress is the lot of the democracy of the United States for 
all time to come. In the arts of peace, our position is transcend- 
ent ; on the land we have built already the tallest and most sub- 
stantial monuments ; and the almost undivided mastery of the seas 
belong to the genius and principles which upholds so proudly, and 
waft in the winds of heaven so nobly, the surmounting flag, 
blazing all over with the Stars and Stripes, those consecrated em- 
blems which marshal the way of peace, liberty and self-government 
for the whole family of nations. The issue, during President John- 
son's administration, is not only a question of great domestic meas- 
ures, but also is the issue of our external relations, and the asser- 
tion of our rights to the highest place in the family of nations, 
and the ascendency of republicanism in every quarter of the globe ; 
if neea be, ultimately and gradually, but rather at the earliest con- 
venient opportunity. It is only thus that our internal tranquillity 
can be preserved. Ourselves must teach, and our children must 
learn, that quiet at home can best be preserved by mixing with 
strangers, talking about the world, and taking a general interest in 
human aifairs. 

Let us cast our eyes over the earth and observe the great dual 
divisions of the human race — the East and the West. One half 
of the old world continues without improvement, and without ideas, 
beneath the Aveight of a barbarian civilization. Contrast with a 
European or American family an Eastern one ; the former is based 
upon equality, the latter upon polygamy and slavery, which leave 
to love its brutal fury, but which deprives it of its sweet sympathy 
and divine illusions. " For love is of God." — 1 John iv. T. Educa- 
tion gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, 
what is man? A splendid slav^, a reasoning savage, vascillating 
between the dignity of an intelligence derived from God, and the 
degradation of passions participated with brutes ! Americans, be 
Americans ; think for yourselves, free as Republicans ever should 
think ; consider the price of your liberties, and stand more upon 
your independence and less on the line of precedent, while all 
around you is in motion. To illustrate this. I need only refer you 
to every steamer which ploughs its way to and from our shores, 
every new vessel which spreads its sails to the ocean winds, eveiy 
mile of railway which is constructed, every ncAV line of telegraph 
Avhicli is established — those iron nerves along which thrills- the 
electricity of thought — all the physical and niental advances which 
characterize this age above others, contribute to bring in contact 
and close dependence, not only individuals and communities, but 
nations themselves. To-day the capital of France is nearer to 



BY LEGAL AUTHORITY. 41 

Washington than it was twenty years ago ; and the Message, 
which then required weeks in the tardy transmission from one por- 
tion of the Union to another, now outstrips the sun and annihilates 
time. The printing press, steam and the telegraph, have utterly 
changed the relation of men and things ; and the policy wliich, 
under previous conditions, was Avise and true, would now be false 
and foolish. Remember there is but one principle and mnny natures 
in matter, and that matter being ever in motion contributes to 
this change. Men, communities and nations under the new order 
of things must react upon each other with new force, and, however 
imperceptibly, influence each others fortunes. To adhere to old 
traditions, and endeavor to shajje our course by the old charts of 
precedent, under these altered circumstances, can only be the coun- 
sel of Rheum-eyed senility, which cannot and should not control 
the conduct of tliis generation. And those who quarrel with the 
spirit of the age, and the geiieral tendencies of events, impunge 
the wisdom of heaven, and set up their weak intellects against that 
divinity which, in the fullness of time, gradually and surely works 
out its beneficent designs. 

Fellow-citizens, trust not to parchment ! trust not to precedent ! 
for, as I have already told you, the history of the world is filled 
with precedents of tyranny and oppression ; and parchment regula- 
tions deceived the people of Virginia. No man had more experi- 
ence in the government of that State than its political father, Mr. 
Jefferson ; no one had more fearlessly pointed out the defects of 
their Constitution. Unfortunately it imposes no check upon the 
legislative power ; their Governor is elected by the legislature, and 
of course is but a creature of that body. Mr. Jefferson, in his 
Notes on Virginia, expresses himself thus : "All the powers of gov- 
ernment, legislative, executive and judiciary, result to the legislative 
body. The concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the 
definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that 
these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by 
a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely 
be as oppressive as one. Let those who doubt it turn their eyes 
on the Republic of Venice. Little will it avail us that they are 
chosen by ourselves. An elective despotism was not the government 
we fought for ; but one which should not only be founded ow free prin- 
ciples^ but in which the powers of government should be so divided 
and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one 
could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked 
and restrained by the others. For this reason, that convention 
which passed the ordinance of government, laid its foundation on 
this basis, that the legislative, executive and judiciary departments 
should be separate and distinct, so that no person should exercise 
the powers of more than one of them at the same time." Here, 
tlien, we have the opinion and the complaint of this great man. 
The legislature of Virginia had usurped the power of all the de- 
partments. The people had declared that those departments should 



42 THE UNION RESTORED 

be independent, but they deceived themselves by trusting to parch- 
ment regulations. 

Distinct branches are not only necessary to the existence of gov- 
ernment, but when you have prescribed them, it is necessary that 
you should make them, in a great degi-ee, independent of each other. 
No government can be so formed as to make tliem entirely separate ; 
but it has been the study of the wisest and best men to invent a 
plan by which they might be rendered as independent of each other 
as the nature of government would admit. The legislative depart- 
ment is by far the strongest, and is constantly inclined to encroach 
upon the weaker branches of government, and upon individual 
rights. This arises from a variety of causes. In the first place, the 
powers of that department are more extensive and undefinable than 
those of any other, which gives its members an exalted idea of their 
superiority. They are the representatives of the people, from 
which circumstance they think they possess, and of right ought to 
possess, all the powers of the people. This is natural, and it is 
easy to imagine the consequences that may follow. 

In reconstruction of the Union, it appears to be our duty, almost 
to fix anew, the principles of representation for a free people. The 
first question for our consideration is, whether it is wise and proper 
that a restriction of any kind should be placed upon the legislative 
power ? On that subject it would seem that little doubt can remain. 
That a check of some kind is necessary has received the sanction 
and been oonfirmed by the experience of ages. A large majority of 
the States in the Union, in which, if the science of Government be 
not better understood, its first principles are certainly more faith- 
fully regarded than in any other country, have provided restrictions 
of this sort. In the Constitution of the freest Governments of 
Europe, the same provisions are adopted. That a restriction is 
proper we are all agreed ; and the question arises, is the amendment 
that I am about to propose more desirable and better adapted to 
perform the ofiice intended than the present system of representa- 
tion ? To arrive at a just conclusion on this subject it will be ne- 
cessary carefully to consider the design of such a check and the 
advantages which are expected to result from it. Its object is, first, 
to guard against hasty and improvident legislation, to protect all 
departments from legislative encroachment; but more especial to 
protect public and private rights against legislative encroachment, 
and to protect labor against capital. With regard to the first of 
these objects— the protection against hasty and improvident legisla- 
tion — the system of every free Government proceeds on the assump- 
tion that checks for that purpose are wise, salutary and proper. 
Hence the division of all legislative bodies into distinct branches, 
each Avith an absolute negative upon the other. The talent, wisdom 
and patriotism of the representatives could be thrown into one 
branch, and the public money saved by the procedure ; still experi- 
ence demonstrates that such a plan tends alike to the destruction of, 
public liberty and private rights. They adopted it in Pennsylvania, 



BT LEGAL ATTTEOEITY. 43 

and it is said to have received the approi^riation of the illustrious 
Franklin, but they found that one branch only led to pernicious ef- 
fects. The system endured but for a season ; and the necessity of 
different branches of their Government to act as m.utual checks upon 
each other was perceived, and the conviction was followed by an 
alteration of their Constitution. The first step, then, towards ckeck- 
ing the wild career of legislation is the organization of two 
branches of the legislature. Composed of different materials, they 
mutually watch over the proceedings of each other. And having 
the benefit of seperate discussions, their measures receive a more 
thorough examination Avhich uniformly leads to more flxvorable 
results. But these branches as now constructed are kindred bodies 
and it might sometimes happen that the same feelings and passions 
would prevail — feehngs and passions which might lead to danger- 
ous results. This rendered it necessary to establish a third branch, 
to revise the proceedings of the two ; but as this revisory power 
has generally been placed in a small body or a single hand, it is not 
vested with an absolute, but nearly with a qualified negative. And 
our experience has proved that this third provision against hasty 
and unadvised acts of the legislature has been salutary and profit- 
able. The people of this State have been in the habit of looking at 
the proceedings of the legislature thus constituted, and they have 
been accustomed to this revisory power. Their objections have 
never been that this revisory power existed, or that it was distinct 
from the legislature ; but they do complain that it is placed in im- 
proper hands ; in the hands of persons not directly responsible to 
the people, and whose duty forbids all connection with the legisla- 
ture. I am one of those who fully believe in the force and effici- 
ency of that objection. 

That Legislative Bodies are subject to passions, and sometimes 
to improper influence, is not to be denied. Mr. Jefferson com- 
plained, in 1781, of the Constitution of Virginia, because the tAvo 
branches of the Legislature were not sufficiently dissimilar, but he 
did not point out the mode in which he thought that object could 
be best effected. That matter was reserved for further explanation, 
and another set of circumstances. That time is born, and the day 
has dawned upon this gigantic young republic. Methinks I hear a 
voice emanating from an oppressed but mighty people, like the low 
moanings of a distant but heavy clap of thunder to arouse them to 
put the veto, from which there is no appeal, upon the unhallowed 
doings of the whole race of monopolists. Let them either rank 
under our Dual Banner, and grant the subsidy of their countenance 
to our warfare ; or, should they espouse the same philanthropic 
cause, we shall content us to volunteer under theirs, and become 
their humble pioneer in beleaguering the liitherto redoubted bul- 
warks of our mutual foe! It must come to this: and I rejoice 
already to observe many symptons of coalition that will ultimately 
crown the principle I advocate with triumph. This dual system of 
regulating the motion of legislative representation must be esta- 



44 THE umON RESTORED 

blished. Sucli is the gravitating tendency of society that no spont 
taneous effort at arms-length will hold it up. It is by the constan- 
energy and strong attraction of our jDOwerful institutions, now 
complete with the cope stone placed upon them by Abraham 
Lincoln, only that the needed intellectual and moral power can be 
applied : and the present is the age of forming them. If this work 
be done, and well done, our country is safe, and the world's hope 
is secure. The goveinment of force will cease, and that of intelli- 
gence and virtue Avill take its place ; and nation after nation, 
cheered by our example, will follow in our footsteps till the whole 
earth is free, 

I would but vilely fulfill the trust which I have imposed upon 
myself, did I, in riccordance with the fawning hypocrisy of the day, 
flatter and mislead the public, from whose liberality I have reaped 
so much, and from Avhom I hope to deserve a further continuance. 
I take it, therefore, for granted, XhoX plain honest truths ungarnished 
by metaphysical research, will best suit the tastes of honest men. 
With these sentiments, under the divine influence of the Eternal 
Motion of the Word of God, I will now place before you, for your 
consideration, a new representative system^ founded upon the two 
gi'and forces by which not the motions of government only, 
but the motions of the Universe are kept in control ; and by these 
forces, and no other, can political life be influenced, either for good 
or for evil, whatever be the nature of the natural agent by which 
they may be called into play. 

It is a matter of some surprise to me that Duality of Motion has 
not more generally engaged the attention of the Professors of 
legal science. Indeed, by this dualty of movement, and no other — 
attraction and repnlsion — I am compelled to explain every variety of 
change which our Government assumes, for throughout all creation, 
we find unity the effect of diversity or repetition. There can be no 
symmetry without this ; the most rugged line you can portray, 
when opposed to its perfect repetition, immediately becomes a 
design, a imity. Man in the abstract, is a unity of the two sexes 
The unity of the individual man is made up of a duplex repetition 
that pervades his entire configuration outwardly as inwardly. The 
life of man in all its functions is a thing of periodic repetitions. 
His passions in like manner are duplex, joy, woe, confidence, fear, 
love, hate, are examples. All things, then, have two aspects. The 
UNITY of action of rich and rooR is proved by the duality of 
Motion and Improvement, which capital and labor is capable of 
producing. 

The unexampled magnitude of the occasion justifies the recon- 
struction of onr legislative system, and the establishing of a more 
effectual dual check-and-balance system to regulate the motion of 
American Legislation. For example, let the rich form one, and the 
2)oor the other, house of the Legislation. Then, and not till then, 
will capital and labor be equally represented. Then will this great 
popular government of self-rule rest ixpon those three substantial 



BT LEGAL AUTHOEITT. 45 

pillars, Wisdom, Strength and Beauty. Wisdom to contrive, 
Strength to sustain, and Beauty to adorn. Individual to contrive, 
Capital to sustain, and Labor to beautify and adorn the material 
furnished by capital, and execute the plans laid down on the great 
ti'estle board by the people, upon the demonstrated truths of 
mathematical science. Guided by those eternal and unchangeable 
truths which this science unfolds and demonstrates, the illustrious 
Isaac Newton determined the properties and the composition of 
light, the cause of the alternate movements of the ocea"n, the 
mechanism of the planetary system, and expanded our views of the 
grandeur of the Universe and the perfection of the Almighty 
Contriver. Need you, then, be told, that these principles are 
applicable to legislation throughout every part of the universe, and 
must be recognised by all intelligent Legislators ? Therefore, not 
presuming to dictate, but humbly suggest that each member of our 
Legislatures be individually reformed to that famed dictate, which 
the Oracle of Delphos pronounced to Cicero, " Follow Nature ! " 
— not in the confined sense of our mortal economy, but in every 
department of her works. One great principle bind them together 
— God in his Unity pervades them all ! That God, who fills all 
immensity of space, and is everywhere present. He is in every- 
thing that he has created : Avhy, because nothing that he has 
created can subsist without his power ; therefore, every effect must 
rest upon its cause. He is in every plant, in every tree, and every 
animated creature ; but in a special manner he manifests his power 
in the hearts of his rational children, because he has made them 
governors of this lower creation, and has fitted them to govern it. 
Now, as we submit to his power, and wait for his Light and Life in 
the soul, all the other creatures remain with us a blessing, and all 
unite in praise to him, even the least animal on earth. And yet see 
what a state and condition men have fallen into. They even 
oppress their own fellow-creatures and take his rights from him — 
they destroy his free agency, which the Almighty never did. Here 
they usurp a power above God Almighty, and bring their fellow- 
creature under bondage by man's power. They take away that in 
which all blessing consists ; for, without the exercise of this free 
agency it were better that he had never been born. The whole is 
a departure from the guidance and influence of the Holy Ghost ; 
for all who have kept under this, as the blessed Jesus reconnnended 
them to, have been led unto all Truth and out of all evil, and they 
have walked safely and gloriously under his government, he being 
their King and Captain. 

Now this doctrine or principle of government that people talk so 
much about, if they understood as they ought, would lead to no 
contention ; and it would seem that the most superficial observer 
could perceive that Americans have nothing to do with precedents. 
Our Fathers sought security and justice not in precedent but in 
principle, and the war from which this country is just emerging 
should teach the world of mankind that America makes rather 



46 ' TEE UNION EE8T0RED 

than follows Precedent. Principle, then, and not Precedent, 
should be the guiding star of the American peoj^le. The applica- 
tion of this Eternal Principle of Law to matter, is fully delineated 
by Kossuth, in his address to the members of the New York bar. 
I yield to him, as his just due, the origin of the reformed applica- 
tion of this principle of law to matter, and to Abraham Lincoln, 
as the martyr in the supreme moment of its permanent crowning. 
I take credit to myself, however, for being one of the first to 
can-y it into effect. 

The evil, perhaps I should say fallacy, of following precedents 
of nations governed by minorities, naturally led me to ask, Can 
this be the proj)er practice ? It was assuredly the practice of 
others — of alL Could all be wrong? Reflection taught me that 
men seldom act for themselves, but take, for the most part, a tons 
or bias from some individual master. 

By education most have been misled : 

So they believe because they were so bred. 

Fellow countrymen, I have had the resolution to think for myself 
— aye, and to act ; and my conviction, gained from much and 
extensive experience, is, that all questions of National Law I'est 
upon the eternal principle or moving power of matter. But let it 
not for a moment be supposed, that in thus sweepingly arraigning 
the present system of legal policy, that of applying precedent 
instead of principle, I have the remotest Avish to degrade the 
profession of the law. It has ever, on the contrary, been my object 
to improve the social position of that noble order. Nor do I 
j^resume to dictate, but in order to render it useful, honorable and 
honored, I would most humbly suggest that the observations of one 
of the boldest and most eloquent of American writers, Dr. Chauning, 
of Boston, be observed and appreciated by every member of the 
profession. " Intellectual culture," says this justly eminent person, 
" consists, not chiefly, as many are apt to think, in accumulating 
information, though this is important ; but in building \\]> a force 
of thought which may be turned at will on any subject on which 
we are forced to pass judgment. This force is manifested in the 
concentration of the attention ; in accurate penetrating observation ; 
in diving beneath the eflect to the cause ; in detecting the more 
siihtle differences and resemblances of things ; in reading the future 
in the present ; and especially in rising from pariiciiiar facts to 
general laws or universal truths. This last exertion of the intellect, 
its rising to broad views and great principles, constitute what is 
called a philosophical mind, and is especially worthy of culture. 
What it means, your own observations must have taught you. 
You must have taken note of two classes of men ; the one always 
employed on details, on particular facts, and the other using these 
facts as foundations of higher, wider truths. The latter are philos- 
ophers. For example, men had for ages seen pieces of wood, 
stones, metals, falling to the ground. Newton seized on these 



B7 LEGAL AUTHORLTY. 47 

particular facts, and rose to tlie idea tliat all matter tends, or is 
attracted towards all matter, and tlien dctinod the law according to 
which this attraction or force acts at dirterent distances ; thus 
giving us a grand Principle, which we have reason to think extends 
to, and controls the whole outward Creatiox. One man reads a 
history, and can tell you all its events, and there stoj-ts. Another 
combines these events, brings tlieui imder one view, and learns the 
great causes which are at work on this or another nation, and what 
are its great tendencies, whether to freedom or despotism, to one 
or other form of civilization. So one man talks continually about 
the particulur actions of this or that neiglibor, while another looks 
beyond the acts to the inward principle from which they spring, 
and gathers from them larger views of human nature. In a word, 
one man sees all things apart and in fragments, while another strives 
to discover the harmony, connexion, Unity of All." 

That such unity, fellow-citizens, does actually and visibly pervade 
the whole subject of legal science, harmonizing with the history of 
every other thing in nature, the experience of twenty jeai's' practice 
in medicine has fully convinced me. One great principle binds 
them together ; God, in his unity, pervades them all ! 

It was a beautiful speculation of Parmenio," remarked Lord 
Bacon, " though but a sjyecniation in him, that all things do by 
scale ascend to unity." Do I need to tell you that every thing on 
this earth which can be weighed and measured is matter — matter 
in one form or another, and that there is but one principle, one 
eternal principle, that pervades all matter ! What is the difference, 
then, between the practice of law and the practice of medicine ? 
A mere difference of degree. The former practices in the first, 
and the latter in the second degree. The same eternal principle 
is applied by both. Who in his senses, then, would deny that the 
lawyer is bound by the conjunction and, in his oath of office, to 
blend in unity the municipal and federal laws in one body and 
apply to the subject-matter '? If the wants of the entire body of 
the people are studied, as the physician studies the wants of every 
part of the human system, instead of one or two parts only, and 
leaving the rest to sicken and decay, the j^ermanency of the nation 
will be rendered more certain, and stability receive greater guar- 
antee. This serves as a glass for the American peoi)le to behold 
the unity of law. The word law, when applied to individuals or 
nations, is an abstract term, expressive of the sum total of harmo- 
nious movements, produced by the principal forces in nature, when 
acting together with perfect periodicity in one body, and api^lied 
by the lawyer to restore an individual or national right, whenever 
impaired by misunderstanding or by violence, or when darkness is 
cast upon the light of truth. But, sorrowful to relate, the writers 
on American law, pursuing a false mode of analysis, have, for a 
long time, been engaged in dividing and subdividing the subject, 
until it reaches its acme in the elaborate and ponderous terms of the 
learned and classical professors, who have long been engaged in 



48 THE UNION RESTORED 

splitting straws, blowing bubbles, and giving a mighty great degree 
of weight to feathers. Of which, such is the extent of subdivision 
and subtihty attained by these authors, that the lawyers are plunged 
into oceans of vapor and often lost in the fog. Thus, mystified by 
theory, man, presumptuous man ! has dared to divide what God, 
as a part of creation, united ; to separate and pervert what the 
Eternal, in the wisdom of his Omnipresence, made entire ! 

Creation being a unity on which all laws depend, it follows that 
no change or disorder of government can be explained without 
having recourse to the sciences, which are the laws of the universe. 
Here we find the thread of the analogy, by which we can reason 
from induction and proceed from demonstration. This mode of 
reasoning has enabled me to give you a system of American law, 
established upon the immutable laws of the terrestrial and plane- 
tary motions, derived from magnetic phenomena with their attend- 
ant influence on political life, as the result of that inductive process 
which has elicited the cause of Universal Motion. 

We read in the Scriptures of the Everlasting Gospel, that " In 
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the 
earth was without form and void ; and darkness was upon the face 
of the waters. And God said let there be light, and there was 
light." Motion, heat and temperaturial changes. Light produces 
motion, moiio?i produces heat, and heat produces changes of tem- 
l^erature. There can be no motion in mattvr without change of tem- 
perature, and no change of temperature without motion in matter. 
This is so indisputable an axiom, that Bacon and others sujjposed 
motion and change of temperature to be one and the same. 

The motive^ -power of a republic must be greater and more rapid 
than that of a despotism, inasmuch as all such movements can only 
result from the action of intellect on matter. Where that action is 
greatest, there physical and material progress, wealth and strength, 
and means of effective action in war or peace, must be proportion- 
ably great. Both our individual and Democratic enterprise have 
thus brought conquest to the very threshold of the ancient dame 
who rehes on her aristocratic birth and 'her liveries. And while 
a noble steamer of our own construction, the Baltic, of the Collins' 
Liverpool line, which has shown that, in steam as in sails, Ameri- 
can enterprise can beat any thing not American, has distanced the 
most recent British construction, and now steams her way into the 
harbor of New York the victor of the old order ; she checks her 
wheels, blows a powerfully loud whistle of astonishment, sends up 
three cheers, and lets ofli" innumerably brass crackers, as the Gabriel 
annunciatior of a new and more salutary birth, moves along in the 
face of wind and tide. A new era has been opened to the world, 
by genius, in the caloric ship Ericsson ; a new element has been 
conquered to the use of man, and the abundant air of heaven has 
been chained to the beam and crank, and it soon will be to the car 
and the factory. Henceforth, as the " snail carries his house upon 



BY LEGAL AUTHORITY. 49 

Ms head," so all men will fiiul their great motor, imponderous and 
ubiquitous, in the air about them. Gentle aerials, which transport 
you to infinite distances, float in every breeze, and people, by science, 
the circumambient air with magic creatures hitlierto invisible save 
to fancy. Poetry becomes tangible and calculable by vulgar lero- 
metess ; and the lover's sigh may no longer waft a kiss to his mis- 
tress, but be deposited in a warming cylinder, and so carry along to 
her steadily himself. Thus every advance leads to another, and the 
triumphs of Democracy are not raised in columns of skulls, but are 
fashioned by the arkwright and the smith ; are not formed in deso- 
lation, but in the creative power of science. Therefore, O, man ! 
come to thy centre, like all other creatures and forms do. Ye men 
of learning and science crowned, come to the centre of science — 
the triune Chemistnj, Magnetism and Electriciiy around which the 
sciences revolve and gravitate. Surely no man, professing to be in 
the least conversant with the physical sciences, Avould now dispute, 
what Mr. Faraday was the first to prove, that all three are, in reality, 
mere modifications of one great power. 

The more you reflect on this subject, the more you must come to 
the opinion, that all things, at last, are only modes or difibrences of 
one matter. Their approach to unity may be traced through every 
thing in nature. Betwixt the history of the human race, for ex- 
ainple, the revolutions of empires, and the history of the individual 
man, the strongest relations of affinity may be traced. The cor- 
jDoreal revolutions of the body, like the revolutions of a kingdom, 
are a series of events ; time, space and motion are equally elements 
of both. " An analyst or a historian," says Hume, " who would 
luidertake to write the history of Europe during any century, 
would be influenced by the connection of time and place. All 
events, which happen in that portion of space and jjeriod of time are 
comprehended in his design, though, in other respects, different 
and unconnected. They have still a si^ecies of unity amid all their 

DIVERSITY." 

That the material atoms of government do follow the laws to 
which all matter is subject, under the particular circumstances in 
which the matter composing them is placed, Sir William Blackstone, 
the author of Common Law, bears unequivocal testimony. He 
says that, " When the Supreme Being formed the universe, and 
created matter out of nothing, he imjiosed certain pruiciples upon 
that matter from which it can never depart, and without which it 
would cease to be. When he put that matter into motion he estab- 
lished certain laws of motion to which all moveable bodies must 
conform. 

"The law of motion being coeval with mankind, and dictated by 
God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is 
binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No 
iiUMAK LAWS ARE OF ANY VALIDITY if Contrary to this ; and such 
of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority, 
mediately or immediately from this original. Human laws are only 
4 



v/ 



50 THE UNION RESTORED 

declaratory of, and act in subordination to, tlie Divine law. In- 
stance the case of murder. This is expressly forbidden by the 
Divine, and demonstrable by the natural ; and from these prohibi- 
tions arise the unlawfulness of this crime. Those human laws 
that annex a punishment to it do not increase the moral guilt or 
superadd any fresh obligation, inforo conscieniice, to abstain from its 
perpetration. Nay, if any human law shall allow or enjoin us to com- 
mit it, roe are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must 
offend both natural and Divine law." — Vide Blackstone's Commen- 
taries, 1 Chit., pp. 25, 27, 28. 

This is what I wish to impress upon American legislators, who 
represent a great and mighty people, and who themselves are 
atoms of this gigantic young republic. Let this eteknal prin- 
ciple, then, be your motto and your mark, and do not forget the 
practical application. Rememlier that the light of nature and 
the dictates of revelation both conspire to demonstrate the eternal 
destiny of united liberty. Permit me here to say to the enemies of 
united constitution liberty, if their hatred cannot be appeased, they 
may prepare to have their eyeballs seared, as they behold the 
steady flight of the American eagle on his burnished wings, for 
years and years to come. 

Let us here, in these United States, where individual rights are 
understood, and where man's more noble and better nature, and 
the faculties which raise him above the brute, are allowed and 
encouraged in their widest scope and freest exercise, where the 
life of intellect flows full and strong through every individual, and 
animates every member of the political body, erect a high tower, 
composed of Religious, Political, and Domestic Freedom, and 
totally abstain from all combinations, ecclesiastical, ■political or civil, 
and build thereon a beacon which shall shed its rays over our 
Legislatures, so that, through the medium of its light they may be 
guided through the dark mazes of anti-American combinations, and 
follow in the wake of that great Light that lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world ; wliich ever has, and ever will, direct, with 
an unerring index, to the scale by which all things ascend to Unity. 

It is the bounden duty of American Legislators to follow the 
leadings and the counsel of God ; for he leads his people and 
guides their feet in the paths of Wisdom; and he alone is the 
saving health of all nations ; and without Him they can do nothing 
that is good and acceptable in his sight. Let their eyes be towards 
Him, who is invisible, dwelling in the Light ; and neither act or 
speak out of his fear and counsel ; then will they be preserved to 
his praise, and to their eternal comfort and peace. And whatever 
they do, let all be done in faith to the glory of God ; for what is 
not \\\ faith is sin. So shall they be kept steadfast on the Immovable 
Bock, legislating laws parallel with the streams from the Fountain 
of Nature. Tins may serve as a glass for all lawyers and judges to 
behold the fallacy of precedents, and the Legislature as merely a 



BY LEGAL AUTHOHITT. 51 

candlestick, bearing the Light of the Eternal Principle of American 
Law, and enable them to follow the Light instead of the stick — 
that Light which emanates from the great First Cause. 

This Eternal Principle applied by the Lawj/er, Doctor, and 
Minister, in harmony Avith the scale by which all things ascend to 
Unity, has become one of the most useful, if not one of the proudest 
works of the human intellect. And let no one approach it with 
inutility or imbecility. This Eternal Principle, or 7na/e and female 
forces, are innate in every kind of matter, without possessing any 
character in common with it, whether it be ponderable or impon- 
derable ; and in their organized or magnetized state, they Avere the 
foundation of the solar system, and of the mineral, vegetable and 
animal kingdoms. Hepitlsioiis. Krpansions, Attractions, Contractions, 
Systematic Action, Motion, and Form, are then in this order, the 
Attributes of these Forces, by M^hich that system and these king- 
doms were formed, with a precision, and attorned with a beauty, 
that defy imitation. Nothing can therefore equal the adaptation of 
these forces to produce such results, for besides their unlimited 
power, which can make a world tremble like a leaf, the great velocity 
of their motions and their almost inconceivable tenuity, enable 
them to penetrate the most minute orifices, and construct an 
infinite variety of bodies of every form and size, and produce 
motion in the smallest structure with the same geometrical accu- 
racy as in the largest. 

This eternal principle when applied by the lawyer, doctor or min- 
ister to the subject matter, is an abstract term expression of the surn 
total of harmonious movement produced by the principal forces in 
Nature when acting together with perfect i^eriodicity in one body. 
It is the same eternal principle that passes np the tender plant, 
causing it to mature and fructify ; and the same principle, when it 
lies dormant in the seed till the season arrives Avhen the same all- 
pervading principle, floating and basking in the sun-beams, whispers 
to the seed, '" arise from the dead !" 

All Nature is subservient and obedient to this all-potent voice. 
And the high intelligence of man, and his lofty reason, owe all their 
force and superior excellence to this most refined and God-like prin- 
ciple. As well might it be said that thei-e are three, six or more 
Gods, as to say that there are three or six different principles. No 
philosopher has ever said so, and no philosopher can say so. Here, 
indeed, 

"A little learning is a dangerous thing ; 
Drink deep, ov taste not this Pierian spring. 
Here shallow draughts intoxicate the brain ; 
But drinking deep sobers it again." 

Every day you hear people talk of a " principle" of a thing, but 
really without knowing what they are talking about : the true mean- 
ing of the word " principle" is unity — something simple or single, to 
which we may specially refer in the midst of an apparently conflict- 
ing variety. That a perfect unity pervades all the Federal and 



52 THE UNION RESTORED 

municipal laws is indisputable, and of the correctness of a unity or 
principle to guide American lawyers and legislators there is as little 
doubt. 

The demonstrated principle of science is eternal and unchange- 
able and is applicable to the municipal Oovernment of the several 
States as that of the general Government or other movable matter. 
And the flights of the loftiest genius that ever appeared on earth, 
when compared with the rapid movements of this principle, the 
motive power of creation may be no more than as the flutterings of 
a microsopic insect to the sublime flights of the soaring eagle. If 
any one should condemn this method of demonstration because it 
is plain and inartificial, I would have such a one know that only 
weak people dispise things for their being simple and plain ; and 
that I am ready to serve the public, though I lose my reputation by 
it. And I will say, that I do not at all question were it not for 
common prejudice that the said unity of the municipal and Federal 
law might be accommodated to the subject matter in adjudication in all 
our courts, and thus silence forever their conflicting decisions. The 
beauty, the harmony, the symmetry of this unity, nobody but such 
as prefer books of Precedents to the Book of Nature and Common 
Sense would be so ignorant as to question. 

Under the Divine influence of principle, we shall see the truth 
triumph, the temple of idols overthrown and the seat of falsehood 
brought to silence ; for we are in the presence of the All-Seeing Eye, 
that Grod who is just and merciful. I hope we all believe this, and 
if so, we must feel that He cannot by any means justify injustice 
in the least degree ; for there is nothing but justice that can recom- 
mend us in the Divine sight. And justice is the great paladium of 
our security in the bonds of eternal truth — this unity is the founda- 
tion of American Independence. It was upon this unity or principle 
that Abraham Lincoln founded a Nationality on Democratic Prin- 
ciples, which was one of his greatest works, and one which marked 
the first great epoch in his history. The Emancipation Proclama- 
tion Avas the central act of his administration and the central fact of 
the nineteeth century. And it was this same principle — the eternal 
motion of the Word of God through an earthen vessel — when, in 1861, 
Daniel S. Dickinson said, "I stand upon the Constitutional ground 
of my fathers. Then I will stand and animate my countrymen to 
stand with me, and when once we shall have peace restored — when 
we shall have put down rebellion, when we shall have encouraged 
fidelity, when peace and prosperity shall again greet us, then let us 
see if any individual is wronged, if any are deprived of their rights. 
See that equal and exact justice is extended to all." These are his 
words and this is my case. "We must be merciful as well as just; 
Ave must possess this most excellent A'irtuc, charity ; and we never 
can have that virtue till we are just, because justice is the founda- 
tion of every virtue. Virtue is true nobility, and wisdom the chan- 
nel by which it is directed. Wisdom seeks the secret shade, the 
lonely cell designed for contemplation ; there enthroned, she sits 



BT LEGAL AUTHORITY. 53 

delivering her sacred oi-acles; there let us seek her aid in applying 
principle to show that the unjust custom of legislative grants to in- 
dividuals at the public expense is a corrupt practice and an abuse 
of the cardinal principle of Democracy. It is certainly believed 
that our legislative halls have, in re])eated instances, l)een made the 
theatres of the most exceptionable and unprincipled })olitical l)argains 
and coalitions, in which men acted, not froui the honest dictates of 
their consciences and with a single eye to the public interests, but 
from the unworthy motive of personal aggrandizement, not only dis- . 
connected with the public good, but in many instances to direct 
hostility against it. It is equally true, that in pro])ortion as these 
charges have been credited abroad, the character of our state has 
sunk in the estimation of all honest men, and the eternal })rinciple 
of law obliterated by violence and darkness cast upon the light of 
truth. It is not my intention at this time to enter into the truth of 
these charges. But inasmuch as the mUiiary engineer has com- 
pleted his Avork, it becomes the bounden duty of the civil cnr/itieer 
to take the helm of public state and probe them, as well as other 
transactions of a deeper cast, and still more injurious in their effects 
upon our public character, to their inmost recesses ; to separate the 
innocent from the guilty ; to vindicate the great body of our citizens 
from the charge of participating in the profligacy of the few, :.nd to 
give rest to that puiturbed spirit which now haunts the scenes of 
former moral and political debaucheries, to the end that this great 
and otherwise flourishing nation, no longer be retarded in her march 
xipward and onward to what I feel and know God Intended it 
should — the centre of freedom for the whole earth, and the place 
where he will delight to manifest His presence. 

In conclusion, I will take my leave of you in the language of our 
martyred President : " With malice towards none, with ciiarity for 
all, with firmness in the right, let us strive on to flnish the work 
Ave are in, to bind up the nation's Avound, to care for him who shall 
haA'e borne the battle, and for his widow and for his orphan ; to do 
all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among 
ourselves and Avith all nations." His Avords are ended ; his voice is 
hushed in death. This is his last legacy. His lips are closed and 
lie shall speak no more. But there is a voice that speaketh even 
noAV. I have heard that voice from heaven say to me, that the 
principles he maintained against the encroaclunont of that black and 
sombre cloud of rebellion, shall be conveyed by the eternal motion 
of the Word of God through earthen vessels till the second coming 
of Christ and the kingcdoms of this Avorld become his kingdom. 



I 



rJC.H^ 



I 



